Professor Arlen Drayk had spent his entire career chasing mysteries. His colleagues at the University of Andromeda Prime admired his brilliance but whispered about his obsessions. Arlen was undeterred, for he believed that the greatest discoveries lay beyond the boundaries of fear.
The Miasma was a region of space that defied understanding. A nebulous cloud of energy and radiation, it swirled ominously at the fringe of known space, a spectral shroud that swallowed all who dared venture too close. The Garrison’s most advanced ships, the Royal’s grandest vessels, and the Arbeiters’ fastest traders had all met their end at the Miasma’s edge. Yet, Arlen was convinced that the secrets within could reshape the galaxy.
“Professor, it’s madness!” his assistant, Lyra, pleaded as they stood on the hangar deck of the Odyssey. “No one has ever returned.”
“That’s exactly why I must go,” Arlen replied, his eyes alight with the fervor of discovery. “Imagine what we could learn, what advancements we could make. The Miasma is not a death sentence—it’s an opportunity.”
The Odyssey was a sleek, state-of-the-art research vessel, outfitted with the best technology the Arbeiters’ wealth could buy. Arlen believed it would withstand the perils of the Miasma, that his preparations and his intellect would see him through.
As the ship embarked, Lyra watched from the observation deck, a mix of hope and dread swirling within her. She knew better than anyone that once Arlen set his mind on something, there was no turning back.
Days turned into weeks as the Odyssey charted a course through the outer regions of space. Arlen meticulously recorded every anomaly, every fluctuation in the ship’s instruments. The edge of the Miasma loomed closer, a dark curtain against the glittering backdrop of stars.
“Entering the Miasma’s boundary in T-minus 60 seconds,” the ship’s AI intoned.
Arlen’s heart raced. The readings were unlike anything he had ever seen—energies that defied the laws of physics, signals that hinted at advanced civilizations long lost to time. He was on the cusp of a breakthrough.
The Odyssey shuddered as it breached the Miasma’s edge. The view screen filled with swirling, iridescent clouds that seemed to pulse with life. Arlen’s fingers danced over the controls, capturing data at an unprecedented rate.
But then, the ship lurched violently. Alarms blared as systems began to fail one by one. Arlen’s confidence wavered, replaced by a gnawing fear. The Miasma was not welcoming—it was hostile, a maelstrom that defied comprehension.
“Stabilize the ship!” Arlen commanded, but the AI’s response was garbled, its circuits fried by the Miasma’s unpredictable forces. The Odyssey spun out of control, drawn deeper into the churning chaos.
Arlen’s last transmission was a garbled mix of static and desperate words. “Data… incredible… don’t… forget…”
And then, silence.
The Odyssey vanished from all known scans, consumed by the Miasma. Lyra and the others at the University mourned the loss, but some whispered that Arlen had succeeded—that he had found what he was looking for and crossed into a realm of knowledge beyond their reach.
The Miasma remained, its secrets intact, its edge a testament to the price of curiosity. And somewhere, perhaps, Professor Arlen Drayk wandered through an alien landscape of wonders and horrors, forever lost to the galaxy he had sought to enlighten.
As the galaxy reels from the aftermath of the great civil war, the chaos that follows brings both peril and opportunity. The fate of Professor Arlen Drayk serves as a haunting reminder of the galaxy’s mysteries, yet his story is only the beginning.
In Echoes of Empire, you are thrust into a universe teetering on the brink. The three dominant factions—the Royals, the Garrison, and the Arbeiters—struggle for supremacy, each with their own vision for the galaxy’s future.
As a player, you must navigate this fractured world, forging alliances, making enemies, and uncovering secrets that could alter the balance of power.
Collect resources from countless celestial bodies, acquire Stardust for a chance at $GALA rewards and engage in epic space battles. Customize your fleet, recruit allies and harness advanced technologies to overcome the challenges that lie ahead.
Join Echoes of Empire today and start your adventure. The galaxy awaits your command. Are you ready to shape its destiny?
Step into the unknown. Embrace the chaos. Become a legend.
Echoes of Empire is a web3 space MMO that combines deep strategy, engaging gameplay, and a dynamic economic system of player ownership. Set in a vast universe consisting of quadrants of space, players can explore, trade, and fight to expand their influence and claim territory. This litepaper outlines the core gameplay mechanics and interactions, providing a comprehensive overview of the game’s design, mechanics, and economic plans.
Overview of Gameplay
Homebase
The core of Echoes of Empire gameplay takes place on a massive scale, larger than any simple planetary inhabitant can comprehend. Each player is the leader of a noble house or family that controls a huge Homebase space station with the capacity to explore known space, mine resources from Celestial Bodies, craft thousands of ships, and battle with enemies. Players are far too important in the grand scheme of the game’s narrative to be relegated to a single planet or habitable moon; therefore, the Echoes of Empire board is the entirety of known outer space. In fact, within the game’s Galaxy view, players and Celestial Objects are represented as tabletop gaming tokens.
Players interact with the game in either Homebase view, where ships, base buildings and blueprints are upgraded and resources are collected, or Galaxy view, where Celestial Bodies and enemy Homebases are viewable for things like harvest deployments and raids.
Your Homebase is HUGE–Big enough to build and manage entire fleets and military operations.
Gameplay
In Echoes of Empire, each player explores the sprawling remains of the crumbled Empire, whose holdings are all up for grabs. Players explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate their way to intergalactic notoriety, using technology from the 3 galactic factions (Arbeiters, Royals and Garrison) which led to the Empire’s downfall. The player’s primary role is that of curator/collector, using resources and strategy to maximize efficiency and growth.
Echoes of Empire is built around various gameplay interactions that drive the player’s experience. These interactions can be broadly classified into the following categories:
Exploration: Through exploration, players can discover and navigate new Celestial Objects. A Celestial Object is anything marked on the Galaxy map and given a rarity.
Combat: Players engage in strategic battles with enemy fleets to achieve strategic objectives or to protect their own assets. At launch, combat will take place only at players’ Homebases and at Celestial Objects that contain resource mines. Future updates will expand the locations where combat can take place.
Trade: To fulfill individual needs or advance their in-game goals, each player may trade resources and assets with other players, but full trade features will not yet be available at launch.
Progression: By advancing their character, fleet, or assets through various activities and mechanics, players can unlock new abilities and features.
Questing: Players participate in narrative-driven missions or tasks, challenging them to achieve specific objectives and receive rewards.
Landholding: Players may acquire and manage their own Celestial Objects via Celestial Claims in order to control resources, access services, and establish strategic presence.
Provisioning: Various items known broadly as Featured Holdings may be obtained through transactions, crafting, or other in-game methods to build and maintain a player’s inventory.
Management: Through resource allocation and strategic decision-making, players can optimize the performance of holdings, such as Fleets and Celestial Objects.
Maintenance: Players must keep up their Homebases and stay competitive by maintaining the functionality and durability of their holdings. Examples are repairing and salvaging ships or managing Homebase operations.
Player Goals
The player’s primary goals are to increase their prominence and influence throughout the Celestial Objects in the various ways described below.
While elements of PvP contention exist and form strong parts of the Echoes of Empire narrative, they are not central to the player experience of upgrading and expanding one’s empire.
Economic System
The economic system consists of several key components, including resource generation and consumption, sinks and faucets, and the role of the game’s web3 elements made possible by GalaChain.
Resource Generation and Consumption
Send multiple fleets to harvest resources from multiple mines on a single Celestial Object like this Epic planet.
Resources are in-game (non-minted) tokens necessary for various interactions such as crafting, trade, and progression. There are 3 main resources (Ore, Vapor, Composite) that can be generated through multiple means (faucets):
Harvesting: Players can collect resources from mines on various Celestial Objects scattered throughout the universe.
Production: Homebases produce resources over time via the 3 upgradeable Extractor buildings. Each Extractor also has a corresponding Vault that allows a certain quantity of the designated resource to be protected against raids. In order to maximize Extractor resource production, players must regularly harvest extracted resources. Upgrading Extractors increases maximum time between claims while maintaining efficiency.
Salvage: When a player has upgraded their Capital Ship Blueprints and unlocked higher tiers of ships, old ships may be scrapped for resources.
Achievement: Players can acquire resources through trade or other in-game interactions such as quests. This includes the new player tutorial, in which valuable resources are awarded for upgrading Homebase buildings.
Trade: With a future update, resources will become tradable between players, or with NPC “vendors.”
These resources can also be consumed in several ways to benefit the player experience, including (sinks):
Crafting: Players use resources to create items such as ships
Trade: With a future update, resources will become tradable between players, or with NPC “vendors.”
Upkeep, Upgrades and Maintenance: Players must spend resources to upgrade and maintain their fleets, Homebases, and owned Celestial Objects.
$GALA Integration and Rewards
Echoes of Empire is powered by GalaChain.
By leveraging web3 tech, Echoes of Empire provides a transparent and secure environment for economic and social interactions. The use of minted items enables players to own in-game assets, such as Ships, Blueprints, Celestial Objects and more. These owned items can be bridged off GalaChain or traded through the in-game marketplace (in a future update).
Many owned items can be permanently upgraded on-chain, allowing active players to use both gameplay and secondary market commerce to find opportunities to increase their in-game holdings.
A designated in-game (non-minted) currency called Stardust is central to the reward structure for Echoes of Empire.
Stardust
Stardust is a special in-game token that can only be obtained by harvesting the mines on Celestial Objects that are owned by other players. When a Celestial Object is unowned, it does not produce Stardust, but if it gets claimed by an owner via a Celestial Claim Token, it will begin producing Stardust.
$GALA is earned and distributed daily from a reward pool (described in detail below) to all eligible players, and Stardust is the sole determining factor for daily $GALA distribution rewards for players.
Raiding for Stardust
Players may raid one another and steal Stardust, and a certain amount of Stardust is protected according to the Homebase level of their Command Center.
Stardust to $GALA Rewards
Each day at 2pm PT, 50% of the Stardust stored in each player’s Homebase is burned and replaced in the player’s Gala account as a $GALA claim allowance. The amount of $GALA available in this reward pool is determined by the total spent on purchases made in the Echoes of Empire store from the previous day.
The percentage of Stardust contributed to the daily burn is directly proportional to the percentage of $GALA from the reward pool that player will receive. $GALA reward tokens will build up daily as a Claim Allowance, to be claimed when the player chooses through their account.
Owners of Celestial Objects also automatically receive a portion of the Stardust generated from other players’ mining of the mines on that Celestial Object. Owners of Celestial Objects set the percentage of Stardust that will be shared with them when the mines on their Celestial Object are used by other players.
“Ownable” Items
Several types of items in Echoes of Empire can be owned by players as GalaChain minted items. This section of the Litepaper outlines the different types of ownership available to players within the game.
Credit Packs
Players can complete upgrades and builds at FTL speed when using Credits!
Credits are a special in-game currency that is sometimes rewarded for achievements. Resource packs (Composite, Ore, Vapor) may be purchased in-game directly for Credits, or Credits may be spent to expedite (eliminate wait time on) upgrade and building processes.
Credit Packs are sold as expendable minted items in the Gala Games store.
Special Blueprints
Capital Ship Blueprints are upgraded in the Research Lab of a Player’s Homebase. Some special Blueprints are only available as GalaChain minted items, purchased from the Gala Games store.
Skins and Cosmetics
Players can use minted items such as Homebase Skins, Ship Skins or exclusive Avatars to create a personalized experience within the game.
Celestial Objects
Celestial Objects come in many different sizes, types and rarities.
Celestial Objects are in-game locations that offer resources, services, or strategic opportunities. Many Celestial Objects may be claimed for ownership by players through the use of a Celestial Claim token for the object’s corresponding sector and rarity.
Essentially, every marked location in the Galaxy view is a Celestial Object, but not every Celestial Object is owned or has the option to be claimed by an owner. For example, no Common Celestial Claim Tokens have been sold via presale, but there are many Common Celestial Objects throughout the Echoes of Empire Galaxy.
Claiming a Celestial Object
By owning a Celestial Claim Token, a player gains the ability to Claim any Celestial Object of the Claim’s specified rarity in the specified quadrant. This Claim action is permanent and may be taken directly from the game’s Galaxy view.
When you claim a Celestial Object using a Celestial Claim Token, your Claim Token is burned and a new Deed token for that Celestial Object is minted to your Gala account, immediately accessible in-game.
Celestial Object Upgrades and Maintenance
Depending on its rarity, your Celestial Object can be upgraded to unlock more mines or additional resources.
By understanding the different types of ownership in Echoes of Empire, players can make informed decisions about how to engage with the game’s economic systems, social interactions, and strategic opportunities. This dynamic landscape of ownership creates an immersive and player-driven experience that lies at the heart of the Echoes of Empire universe.
Prepare for Launch
Echoes of Empire combines engaging 4x gameplay with a dynamic, player-driven economy to foster a rewarding and immersive player experience that always puts quality of gameplay first.
There are many more details and strategic nuances to Echoes of Empire than have been shared in this litepaper, so look out for updates from the development team as we prepare for launch before the end of January 2024.
The rush for galactic glory begins on Tuesday, January 30th!
Subject to Change
Any and all details in this litepaper document are subject to change without notice and for any reason. This document has been presented in good faith to the Gala Games community to assist Echoes of Empire fans in their early strategic decisions.
Any substantial edits to this document will be announced to the community in Discord and logged at the bottom of this blog.
Gala Games and Ion Games are pleased to announce that the 4X space adventure, Echoes of Empire, is now live for PC and Mac on the Gala Games platform.
The Empire has fallen. Overcome by greed and ambition, those who controlled the ebb and flow of the entire civilized galaxy have been destroyed by their own mistakes. Its separation into three destructive factions, each with its own ideas of how the imperium should have run, was the beginning of the end. Now the broken pieces of those factions and the technologies they pioneered must all be used to rebuild civilization or else propel humanity into a new dark age, similar to that before FTL travel was invented.
As an Echoes of Empire player, you represent one of those noble families. Your goal is not only to amass power and influence for yourself, but to guide humanity into the future and away from that dark past. You cannot let the Empire’s failure determine the fate of every living soul in the known universe. You must forge out some semblance of prosperity, with or without the elusive peace that your predecessors ironically fought so hard to maintain.
Anyone with a Gala Games account can download the game now through the Gala Games launcher and play for free. The sooner you begin collecting resources and upgrading your Homebase station, the better positioned you will be when all hell breaks loose in the galactic superwars that are inevitable in the aftermath of the Empire’s decay. Glory and wealth will go to those who want them the most, to those who are willing to do anything for what they think is right.
Own Planets and Stars
The Echoes of Empire launch also marks the beginning of the Celestial Claim land rush for all players. All holders of Celestial Claim tokens (ERC-1155) will have the opportunity to claim any available Celestial Object that matches the parameters of their Claim token.
Imagine owning a Legendary Celestial Object like this one!
Celestial Object ownership is not a requirement to play, but every Celestial Object is home to multiple resource mines, which will be needed by all players to keep up with Homebase expansion and Fleet construction. When you are the claimed owner of a Celestial Object, you’re also the owner of its mines, entitling you to a portion of rewards (in the form of StarStardust) when those mines are used by other players. The more your Celestial Object is harvested, the more Stardust you can potentially receive as the owner. Stardust is then used to determine the amount of GALA you will receive in the daily reward distribution. Look for more detailed information about Stardust and rewards in the Litepaper, coming soon.
Starting Building and Conquer the Galaxy
The race to become a galactic superpower has begun, and power beyond measure is within anyone’s grasp.
Your new empire awaits, Commander. What will you make of it?
Before global launch on January 30th, owners of Celestial Claims will rush over the vast galactic playing field to claim their own celestial bodies.
The time has come to ignite your engines and set off into the unknown. Echoes of Empire will soon be here. Where will you make your home?
With the game launching on Tuesday, January 30th, it’s about time for the great Celestial land rush to begin, bringing a new dimension of strategic gamification into the fray. Claim holders will have to make some important choices that will impact the future of the entire Echoes of Empire galaxy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEe0cpK79hc
Get Ready for Land Rush!
As spacefarers everywhere make last minute preparations for launch, Celestial Claim owners will have an exclusive early period to tour space, pick out their claim and get building their empire!
To reiterate, this will not just be an early period where Celestial Claim owners can claim their planet. The game will be live and active, so new planet owners are welcome to enjoy their first hours in Echoes of Empire as soon as they stake their claim.
Celestial Claim owners will be allowed to enter early to find their dream planet based on the rarity of their claim:
Monday, January 29th. 8am PT: Ancients
Monday, January 29th, 12pm PT:Legendaries
Monday, January 29th, 4pm PT: Epics
Tuesday, January 30th, 8am PT:Rares
Tuesday, January 30th, 11am PT:Uncommons
Tuesday, January 30th, 2pm PT: GLOBAL LAUNCH
Not an Owner Yet?
The primary early sale for Celestial Claims may be over, but this game is backed by the power of GalaChain and web3 tech for a reason. You can still pick up pre-claimed Celestial Claim tokens of all rarities on the OpenSea secondary market or right on GalaChain through our friends at NFT Harbor… as long as others are looking to sell!
Choosing a Celestial Body
There is no going back from spending a Celestial Claim token to claim a Celestial Body, so make sure you take as much as possible into consideration.
By claiming as early as possible in the galactic land rush, you’ll have an opportunity to stake your claim in the most high profile Celestial Bodies. Location is important because of the travel time needed by mining fleets to reach their destinations with every deployment. Proximity to (or distance from) rival players is also important, but it will be difficult to tell early on where various players have decided to concentrate their forces.
Homebase stations are mobile in Echoes of Empire, and players can relocate by using Teleporters. Some Teleporters are targeted (player chooses the destination) while others are entirely random.
Some players may want to wait for the first wave of claimed owners to lay their foundations, because learning from their actions will offer an advantage. Of course, those players will have a head start on you in terms of the collection of Stardust and other resources, so you’ll want to protect your Homebase accordingly.
There it is, Commander. No one said claiming ownership of Celestial Bodies came with only easy decisions to make. We will do everything we can to help inform your decisions, because no matter which faction(s) you support, we all want the galaxy to become a prosperous and peaceful place. There’s plenty of room for all… right?
What is a Celestial Claim?
Owning a token for a Celestial Claim is just what it sounds like. You don’t own a specific celestial body in the game yet, and the game is not going to assign one to you. Instead, you will enjoy complete freedom to choose (within the established parameters of your Claim) the Celestial Body over which you will take ownership and control.
Each token represents the holder’s right to claim a specific Celestial Body in-game. There are several different rarities of Celestial Claims, each representing different types of Celestial Bodies with varying degrees of resource mining potential.
Rarity Benefits
Uncommon Celestial Bodies consist of rocky planetoids, volcanic moons and rare earth asteroids. These Bodies can have up to three mines each, generating a single resource type and an average amount of Stardust for owners. Each mine on an Uncommon Celestial Body may be leased to up to 3 players.
Rare Celestial Bodies consist of habitable planets and moons. These Bodies can have up to 4 mines which generate a single resource type and a slightly higher-than-average amount of Stardust. Each mine on a Rare Celestial Body may be leased by up to 4 players.
Epic Celestial Bodies consist of gas giants and super earths. They can have up to 5 mines of increased capacity and generate 2 distinct resource types. Mining on Epic Celestial Bodies generates an above average amount of Stardustand mines may be leased to up to 6 players each.
Legendary Celestial Bodies consist of red giants and white dwarfs. They can have up to 7 mines of increased capacity generating all 3 resource types. Legendary Celestial Bodies generate a greatly increased amount of Stardust, and each mine can be leased to up to 10 players.
Location wise, there are 3 Clusters (quadrants) of Celestial Claims: Ember’s Grace, Aurora’s Edge, and The Pale. Early on, it’s any player’s guess where the action will take place.
How to Claim Your Celestial Land
Once you own a Celestial Claim token, claiming a Celestial Body of your choice is easy in the game:
Bridge the tokenized claim to GalaChain–If you purchased your Claim in the primary sale last year or picked it up on the secondary market, you’ll need to bridge the token from Ethereum to GalaChain to gain access to it in the game.
Select a Spot–Within the Galaxy Map, locate a Celestial Body of the rarity that corresponds to your Celestial Claim, in the correct Cluster. Look for the colored diamond at the top of that Body’s marker, which indicates the rarity.
Choose Claim–By choosing the Claim option when you have a corresponding Claim token in your account inventory, your Celestial Claim will be spent and a GalaChain-minted deed for that Celestial Body will be issued.
Once your Celestial Claim Token has been burned, your GalaChain deed token will be fully transferable to other players within the ecosystem, or bridgeable to Ethereum, where you can trade as you see fit on the secondary market.
Countdown to Launch
The launch of Echoes of Empire is in just a few days, and we couldn’t be more excited to go explore the galaxy!
Stay tuned to hear more from us over the next couple of days as we dive into the vastness of space together!
