Achron: Difference between revisions

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The colonization of the Remnant system was a breakthrough in humanity's outward expansion. The colonists awoke to discover that the Remnant system was far more than they originally thought: [[Precursors|Vast alien ruins]] tens of thousands of years old were discovered on the surfaces and in the orbits of the third, fourth and seventh planets. Evidence of inhabitation was even found on a few of the moons in the system.

Research on the found ruins began immediately, and led to the discovery of the principles of instantaneous teleportation. Very quickly, Remnant became a research and development focus for the best minds in the human empire. In just a few short decades, humanity's colonies were interconnected by a far-reaching network of bi-directional gates.

 

 

'''Mechanics:'''

''Achron'' refers to itself as the first "[[Real Time Strategy|Meta Time Strategy Game]]" , i.e. it uses [[Time Travel]] as a functional game mechanic. It's possible to issue commands to units in the recent past or near future, and even send them to different times.

 

# Only a small segment of the timeline is actually playable: a range that usually extends from around 6 minutes in the past up to approximately 1 minute in the future. Any events that pass beyond the past edge of the playable timeframe are finalized and cannot be changed.

# '[[Delayed Ripple Effect|Timewaves]]' are regularly spawned at the event horizon between the mutable and immutable sections of the timeline. These progress up the timeline at high relative 'speed' (default settings have it at 3.1 seconds / second), carrying changes to the timeline with them. Players also act as ad-hoc timewaves; propagating any changes they observe.

A trailer can be seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ9_zCPjCJs here]

 

 

== Time Travel Tropes ==

[[Time Travel]]: Basically the ''entire point of the game''.

* [[Delayed Ripple Effect]]: A gameplay necessity, since if changes to the timeline were instantaneous, games would basically boil down to who sent something to the past first. Timewaves typically travel at three time the speed of time.

* [[Futureshadowing]]: Standard multiplayer game mechanic. There's also a commonly used tactic based on this called "echo scouting" where a player orders a scout to rush into the enemy's base, skips to the future to see what the scout will find, then skips back to the present and tells the scout to cancel its suicide order in the first place.

* [[Temporal Paradox]]: Why should the [[Grandfather Paradox]] get all the love? Ontological paradoxes occur pretty often too.

* [[Just One Second Out of Sync]]: This trope occurs in a tactic called "Timewave Dodging". If a unit dies in the past, any passing timewaves will propagate its nonexistence into the present. By time traveling it right across the approaching timewave, you can prevent it from being erased from existence. Weirdly enough, you're not hiding from other time travelers; you're hiding from causality itself!

* [[Mental Time Travel]]: Your primary ability as an Achron. Explained in the campaign as a cross-temporal radio.

* [[My Future Self and Me]]: Ever-present occupational hazard for any soldiers in this game. The duplicates are referred to as 'chronoclones'. Can often lead to...

* [[Help Your Self in the Future]]: You can send units from the future to help their past selves defend the base.

* [[Place Beyond Time]]: A really strange version of it, at least. There's a section of the timeline that's hard to reach if you don't already know of its existence: [[Fan Nickname|"The Beach"]]. It's a completely empty version of the map you're playing; a region in the future where causality from the present never reached. This is probably the only ''mechanical'' version of the [[Place Beyond Time]] (other video games simply create an extra, perfectly normal level and give it some backstory).

* [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right]]: ... the dual of the above tactic.

* [[Stable Time Loop]]: You can defend your factories with units that they are going to build.

* [[Temporal Sickness]]: Units glow softly right after you chronoport them. They're perfectly functional, with the one exception being that if they chronoport again before the glow wears off... ''they'll be destroyed''. The effect has thus earned the nickname "rechronoport delay".

* [[Terminator Twosome]]: Your standard two-player game.

** The fandom compiled a [[Long List]] of strategies making use of time-travel (apparently lost when the fanbase migrated to the official forums). Almost all of them fit this trope.

*** The list has been reconstructed within the Achron Wiki. It's a lot more scattered though, and could use consolidation.

* [[Awesome but Practical]]: Time travel. Play the demo. It's very, very easy. In fact, most of the time you'll be playing a minute or so in the past, and won't even notice because you're using so little chronoenergy.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: The game is developed by indie studio Hazardous Software, which was founded by [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|Dr. Chris Hazard]]. Which doubles as...

* [[Awesome McCoolname]]

* [[Big Name Fan]]: Shadowfury333, whose Youtube channel has become (starting from late 2010), the main channel for casts of games. Also a source of many maps.

** While the current game generally involves around four players fighting across seven minutes of time, this is simply a computational constraint of modern hardware. The devs have future-proofed the Resequence Engine by making it scalable: it can theoretically support up to fifteen players fighting across a ''two-week long active timeline'' populated with thousands of timewaves.

* [[Gambit Pileup]]: The obvious result of two enemies with time travel technology trying to turn the tide of the same battle.