Automatons

For an overview of all factions, see Factions.

The Automaton Leader

The Automatons are one of the playable factions in Endless Space. These clockwork beings formed a strong bond with nature and keep to themselves when possible.

Background

The Automatons were created by a long dead civilization known as the Reyans who perished many millennia ago due to the gradual self-destruction of their world. Decades of uncontrolled industrialization and technologies that relied on a highly toxic underground fuel caused irreversible damage to the ecosystem and atmosphere of their planet. Realizing that they were doomed, the Reyans attempted to build a massive fleet of migration ships to escape their planet, but most of the ships either exploded on launch, or stalled in the atmosphere and fell to the ground. The Reyans despaired… and so they decided to leave a legacy in the form of one of their greatest technological achievements, clockwork beings. Having a very old and proud history of clockwork, the Reyans had achieved the maximum potential of the technology in their creation of massive clockwork men to which they gifted all the traits of a young species. Within a year of the creation of the clockwork men, the Reyans committed mass suicide so as not to suffer through the effects of a dying planet, leaving their greatest creations behind, alone, and lost.

Over time the clockwork creations of the Reyans developed a simple society of their own and began exploiting the technologies left behind by their creators. All was well for the young civilization of machines until one day a large Endless ship crashed into the planet spreading the dust it was transporting all over the surface. The dust modified the machines, gave them enhanced abilities and over time even sentience. The deadly and toxic fuel that used to power the machines was also replaced, but strangely the new fuel became dust. In only a few weeks, the clockwork machines had evolved, become truly sentient, and gained new purpose in existence which was unheard of in even the most advanced AI’s created by the Endless. They came to call themselves, the Automatons and with the newly gained freedom of dust they began learning... and advancing.

The Automaton Civilization stayed on their planet, learning to live in a symbiotic relationship with nature as the planet healed over time. They used the knowledge of their creators and their new dust engines to produce massive floating ships on which they lived in order to protect the healing ecosystem on the planet from their involvement. Over the course of centuries the planet healed and the Automatons learned to live with and love nature while still developing immense industrial capacity and production within the hulls of their floating ships --which had also grown over time. But eventually the Automatons calculated that their dust supply would run out and their civilization would die, so they uncovered the old ruins of the crashed Endless ship and began developing their own vehicles for space flight.

Traits

Automatons Affinity	+1 Over Production to Stack Factor on System. +5% Interest for Stacked on System. Automaton Faction-Specific Technologies
Spendthrifts	-10% on Systems.
Merchants	+1 Trade Routes Cap on System.
Unlucky Colonists	Adds a Negative Anomaly.
Optimistic	+20 on System.
Crowded Planets	+2 on Small. +2 on Tiny. +1 on Medium.
Diplomats	+50% Trade Routes Bonuses on System.
Anarchists	-2 Command Points Cap on Empire.
Strong Alloys	+20% on Ships
Symbiosis	+30% Trade Routes Bonuses per Cooperation Treaty on System.
Dust Impaired	+50% Abilities cost on Hero.
Fearless Warriors	+25% Defense per on System.

Notes

Affinity

The in-game effect description for Automatons Affinity is less than helpful. Here is an explanation:

Unused Industry is stored, or "stacked" (e.g. when production queue is empty). Stacked industry earns 5% interest per turn. Up to 5 turns worth of Industry can be stacked (overage is lost). System improvements can increase the interest earned to 20% per turn, and give a defense bonus based on stacked industry.

To see the benefit of this, imagine that your system produces 100 Industry each turn. If you are actively building something (or converting Industry to Dust or Science), you will produce 300 Industry in three turns. However, if you keep an empty build queue, the 5% interest will mean that after three turns, your system has 331 stacked Industry. With the unique system improvement that gives +15% interest on stacked Industry, the same system would have 436 stacked Industry after three turns. Thus, you could build an improvement costing 500 Industry in only four turns (three turns with an empty production queue, and building the improvement at the end of the fourth turn), instead of working on it constantly for five turns.

One more possible application of the Automatons affinity is colony ship building. Normally during this process the population growth is suspended on the system, however, Automatons can stack industry for 5 turns and then build a ship in one turn, thus saving up to 5 turns of the system growth, which is a significant advantage during the initial expansion stage.

Details from the dev team:

1. At the end of the turn, if there is an overproduction, it's stacked instead of being reported.
2. At the beginning of a turn, an interest is applied to the stacked industry, allowing it to increase a bit.
3. The stacked industry is capped at 5 * system's industry.
4. If the overproduction cannot be stacked, it's conserved for the next turn like the current mechanism.
5. When the automatons build improvements & ships, the industry is used in the following order:
   1. system's industry
   2. overproduction
   3. stacked industry
6. When a system from the Automatons is invaded, the stacked industry is destroyed, reset to 0 even if the invader is an Automaton.

Behind the Scenes

The Automatons were the brainchild of Panzer, an Endless Space player. Ahead of Amplitude's first expansion, the company called for a contest of user-created factions. The winner would be incorporated into the game as a full, canonical faction.

Panzer's Automatons, which were designed to be competitive without needing to expand rapidly, eventually prevailed over dozens of other nominees. The new faction was introduced with the first addon to Endless Space, Rise of the Automatons.

Miscellaneous

• When first added to the game, the Automatons did not have their own ship models, and instead used the ship models of the Cravers. A community poll to select unique Automaton ship models for Amplitude Studios to create for the game occurred in March 2013, and the finalized designs were revealed on June 24, 2013. Following the release of the expansion pack Endless Space: Disharmony, the Automaton ship models will be added to the game in a free update.
• When referring to themselves, the Automatons almost always avoid using "we" or "us" but instead speak in the third person - "The Automaton..."
• According to Panzer, the Automaton government is run by the original Automatons, the ones originally built by the Reyans.