Hey guys and gals!
After a quite staggering almost 200 submissions were offered on our forums, then reduced to 12 finalists, we finally have a winner for our Game Design! The winning entry is the Unfallen, a society of sentient trees. Read on below to learn more about them!
The Unfallen, by DevilDogFF (click to see original submission)
| Bio: Soft spoken, giant beings with a shared consciousness, The Unfallen's oldest are thousands of years old. The oldest of which are selected to live on as sentient battleships when duty calls. Saplings, Unfallen that are less than 500 years old, are generally the work force as they are much smaller and use their tree limbs to manipulate basic machinery and work to establish infrastructure. They are the natural enemies of aggressive species and after losing many planets to their destructiveness, have developed specific defenses to them. Their long history as slaves have led them to raze themselves rather than have one of their planets occupied. In a time of crisis, The Unfallen use a mixture of seeds and sporelings to...convince a friendly faction to come to arms on their behalf. Once chosen for the task, the elder trees are molded in to monstrous defensive battleships that are surprisingly more heavily armored than even the most advanced of other's battleships. They exist simply to defend their planets from invasion, however, and don't fare well on the offensive (though enough of them can overcome that weakness). Gameplay: War and Peace from the Senate: The Unfallen cannot declare war while the Pacifists are in control of the senate. As they're peaceful by nature, they also receive a 20% malus to happiness when they declare war with anyone else in control of the senate, except Militarists. With Militarists in control of the senate, they can declare war freely and receive no malus to their happiness. Smoking the Trees: The Unfallen can force peace by sacrificing a population unit, as their smoke is intoxicating and has an extreme pacification effect. This truce lasts twice as long as a normal truce as the effect of the smoke is addictive, too. This sacrifice is highly regarded as one of the most noble things an Unfallen can do. Living Dwellings: The Unfallen use food as their production, as they use their own to construct their infrastructure. Therefore, Industry is not utilized. From One, Cosmic Power: They use their own to build monstrous ships, which require populations points to build. As such, some of the larger hulls are available a bit earlier, too. They also regenerate over time, without the need for technology. They're In The Trees!: As The Unfallen share an affinity with all plant life, plant life on other faction's planets give The Unfallen some non-detailed information once they've become aware of The Unfallen's existence. Build queue, population and stationed ships are known to The Unfallen. Peace Provides Sentience: Being at peace with the Unfallen provides you with one Unfallen population point at every planet you have with a temperate environment, once each planet has room. As a race achieves peace with the Unfallen, the Unfallen enlighten the native tree population. Each Unfallen population unit receives a bonus to food production. Miscellaneous: The Unfallen's ships are a mix of organic material and machinery, so The Unfallen's ships are basically cyborgs. (Thanks to Bluecreeper101 for the help in clarifying this) They prefer arboreal planets, namely jungle planets, and don't do well on dry, arid planets. |
Congratulations to DevilDogFF, and thanks to all who participated and voted! 
We're now moving on to the Second Phase of this contest, the Visual Design! After some concerns were brought up regarding submissions format (among others), we've decided to be a bit more straightforward in what we're expecting from a submission.
It'll look a lot like the picture below, except, of course, with more sentient trees.
The rules for Phase 2 are the following:
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Rules regarding self-promotion, advertising etc.: As this is a private submission, all postings of individual submissions should be in this specific thread, and not elsewhere on the forums or Steam forums. We can't and won't police submissions posted on external forums, and won't prevent you from asking your friends or strangers to support your submission. However, abuses will be treated with extreme prejudice, leading to possible disqualification and ban from participating in upcoming contests. In short, don't be that person. 
The deadline for submitting Friday 16th, 4pm CEST. If you didn't see where and how to submit your ideas, please read the rules! 
If you have any questions on the contest or the submission, feel free to ask.
Now get your drawing caps on, and have fun!
And yes, the format is a lot more rigid than what we're usually doing, mostly because several comments mentioned that having a rigid template to follow would make it easier for everyone to have a quality submission, and harder to just throw in everything and the kitchen sink in order to win. It's more constraining, but we hope in the long run it allows more ideas to stand on an equal footing.
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