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Once you’ve worked your way through the tutorial and overcome the shock of being completely oblivious as to how the game works, you can settle in and find your niche. Starting out as a scout will give you the opportunity to become familiar with the game interface and flight controls, which are fairly complicated at first. When you join a game, you are taken to a garrison, or docking station, where you can select which ship you want to fly. After choosing from a handful of ships, you load up with the weapons of your choice. Typically, you’ll have a primary weapon, such as a Gatling gun, and some seeker missiles or mines. Currently, there is a maximum of 18 different fighters, 16 capital ships, and 20 weapons in the game, but you’ll typically choose from four or five different ships and half-a-dozen or so weapons. Each ship has multiple weapon mounts and several cargo bays, allowing you to mix your weapons depending on the type of mission you plan on embarking. If piloting a ship proves to be too challenging at first, you can hop into the turret of a docked bomber or gunship, and simply focus on targeting enemy ships while the bomber pilot does all the flying. Each bomber has two turret positions in addition to the turret controlled by the pilot. Other ships include interceptors, which are good for close-range dogfighting, and stealth fighters, which are best used for harassing the enemy without being seen. Additionally, there are several capital-class ships that are good for destroying enemy outposts and starbases.

Gameplay

Allegiance offers several different types of gameplay, including Capture the Flag, Death Match, Artifact Hunting, and the most popular – Conquest. The objective in Conquest is to capture and hold all of the sectors within a galaxy, and is where the strategic aspect of the game comes into play. Each Allegiance map consists of several different sectors connected by Alephs, which are like black holes that transport ships from one sector to another. If your commander is doing his job well, you will also be able to transport to different sectors using a “ripcord” feature. Ripcording allows you to instantly hop to any sector that has a teleport receiver. This comes in handy when you’re trying to get to the front lines very quickly, or find yourself surrounded by more enemies than you can handle. When the game first begins, almost all of the sectors are unoccupied and open for exploration. The first 15 minutes of any game is therefore a race to see which side can find all of the sectors first. Once the sectors are located, the commander can start building outposts and starbases in the best strategic locations.