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The commander, incidentally, is the only person on your team who has the authority to build structures. He may be assisted by the person who invests your faction’s income, in order to concentrate on directing the battlefield. There are several different tech trees that will have to be researched before your faction has access to advanced weapons and ships. It is the commander’s responsibility to choose which tech tree is researched. Research requires money, which is donated to the commander by each player on payday. Any player can decide to keep his or her money rather than donating it to the commander, but to attain maximum efficiency and ultimate success, it’s necessary that everyone’s paycheck go to the commander. Additionally, resources must be mined to keep a steady supply of money for your expansion. Helium3 is the primary resource, and often becomes a critical factor in winning or losing. It’s the commander’s job to make sure there are enough miners working to keep your faction from running out of money. The commander also researches the technology for a structure, and assigns that structure to be built on an asteroid. All the major structures in the game have to be built on an asteroid, and each sector contains different types of asteroids. Helium asteroids are for mining, while other asteroids are for building structures. Eventually, under your commander’s direction, your faction will have several sectors occupied with starbases, garrisons, shipyards, teleport recievers, and other buildings.

All of this adds up to a lot of strategy, which is perhaps the most appealing part of the game. Thus, it’s only natural to want to try your hand at commanding. Just think – you’re in charge of the galaxy, you decide what ships are going to be researched, and you assign your teammates to places they are needed. But getting into the commander’s chair is more difficult than out-witting Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise. For one thing, the learning curve of Allegiance is pretty steep. Also, your veteran teammates are usually less than enthusiastic about showing you the ropes. But if you have a fair amount of patience, and don’t mind taking a few tongue lashings each time you mess up, being commander can be fun. Besides, you can’t really appreciate the scope of the game unless you command once or twice.