All-Hands is an indie sci-fi role playing game, using a text adventure interface to interact with the events of the universe around you. You will need to manage the troubles of star systems, the requests of other captains and their ships, along with situations that develop among your crews, while advancing the corporate agenda of your chosen patron. Build your fleet from over 60 unique combat ships, each with their own statistics and fire patterns, to engage in turn-based combat on a grid system, while avoiding a game over if your fleet is destroyed on the battlefield. Develop relationships with each corporate nation, based on your own decisions, and claim the rewards or repercussions that result from them.

Choose your patron from 7 Corporate Nations, each with their own agenda, ships, and expectations for your fleet
Build your fleet from any ships you encounter, or those you befriend through your choices
Manage the supplies and morale of your crews, to ensure they are combat ready
Decide on the events you wish to participate in, and how you will do so, but be wary, for no crew wish for a coward to be in command
Create your own reputation within the world based on your accomplishments, decisions, and performance on the battlefield
Jump from one star system to the next, using a one-click, no map UI, with hundreds of human written events randomly assigned as you play

The Corporate Nations

The SolSys Corporation

At the end of the capitalist stage of early human civilisation, the natural conclusion of roll-up strategies and acquisitions placed the ownership of humanity in the hands of only four companies, their wealth positioning them above geographical countries and states, and resulting in the development of their own armed forces, forever changing commercial disputes into armed conflicts. To prevent Earth encompassing war, a compromise was agreed. Those companies that remained would merge to form a single entity responsible for the human race, and its future. The SolSys Corporation was born, the very first Corporate Nation, and the entity that fairly claims responsibility for the population of the reached universe. Long is their history during the expansion period, but it is generally agreed that their stewardship of the stars during such times was unkind at best. The Corporation sought to rule with a heavy hand, ultimately resulting in the birth of their modern competitors, and deaths beyond count in wars long forgotten. Their dominance in territory and wealth persists from such early times in humanities course, but they are far from unchallenged among the stars. It is the Hoags Conglomerate who were the first to break their rule, and so today the first to be the targets of their ire and pursuit of new territory. The wars between them have burned away galaxies of life, but are abated, for now at least

Trivariate Holdings

The vastness of a Corporate Nations administrative burdens is beyond the comprehension of any single individual, but it was common practice during the early expansion period for the largest logistical organisations to be named in vernacular, in order to be able to discuss them without identifying serial numbers and captains from endless lists of star systems. One such organisation, known as the Trivariate, was the principle haulage and transport body of the SolSys Corporation. Significantly to its future, its primary long route functioned between the Sol System and the Hoags object. During the first great war, where the Hoags Conglomerate was formed and the dominance of SolSys fractured, the Trivariate found themselves stuck between both parties in the conflict, either offered great reward, or threatened with death in order to compel their services. It was by the great wisdom of the organisations matriarch of the time, that the Trivariate acceded to neither. Instead they withdrew from the conflicts borders and claimed systems of their own far from it, beginning the Trivariate Holdings of today. As with that era, their principle function remains the transport and haulage of goods and materials across the populated universe. Their wealth facilitated the creation of their own warships, and their function ensures other Corporate Nations are dependent upon their services, a balance of power and position that has kept them in high regard and times of peace.

The Hoags Conglomerate

The second Corporate Nation, and the first to bring war to the populated universe, the Hoags Conglomerate was originally a galactic administrative body of the SolSys Corporation. Unlike those that later parted ways with SolSys, it was neither political events, necessity, nor any extreme occurrence that created the faction and caused the wars that followed, but instead the machinations of a single individual, Tal Neru. Historians and Polemologists argue to this day as to his nature, intent, and the exact means by which he accrued power, but it is a certainty that he lead the organisation against SolSys, and did so with a casual disregard for life on both sides of the conflict. Far more disconcerting in modern times, is the fact that Tal Neru leads the Hoags Conglomerate still. His longevity is speculated upon across the universe, but the truth is known by none. All among the Hoags owe personal loyalty to him, and claim to act upon his orders, presenting the notion that he alone manipulates the events of the galaxies with a Corporate Nation as his hand. Their corporate agenda is to act in simple spite of their formers masters, encouraging trade in all matters outlawed by SolSys, and so forbidden items are ferried across the universe with unique jump technology that makes their capture almost impossible. Their wealth and power, combined with the wrath of their tyrant master, ensures that only SolSys stand against them in corporate disputes, though they hold the Faithful in high regard, and will often acquiesce to their calls for restraint.

The Red Fleet

In all ages, of all societies, there have existed the malcontent, dissident, and rebellious. Those who reject the formality of a rules bound society based on the civics of long dead scholars. For the most part, they live and die as individuals, but on rare occasions in history, they are united in place and purpose for a time, drawn by the same promises of dreams their own. Such was the case for the Red Fleet, originally a flotilla, of what historians now agree can be classified as pirates. The flotilla was known for raiding corporate ships and convoys, but always allowing civilians to pass freely, leaving no dead in their wake no matter the plunder involved. This careful consideration of their crimes made the Red Fleet an annoyance, rather than a problem to be directly attacked with military force, and so the the flotilla grew in size and continued its piracy. It was barely a few hundred years later that several grand fleets begun to claim the name for themselves, abiding by the same code, now recognised as a means to evade full scale punishment from military forces. One such fleet was instrumental in the battles for Abell 2029, a cluster of galaxies in no man’s land between opposing front lines in the first great war. They took no payment for repelling the Hoags forces, even after heavy losses, and so it was that the SolSys Corporation, unable to be rid of them or control them, yet indebted to them greatly, chartered the Red Fleet as a Corporate Nation in an attempt to bring formality and stability to the Red Fleets forces. This failed, for the Red Fleet will never be a single point of authority to be bargained with, and today works as a collective of the mightiest captains among them, each taking a cut of the others financial gains. There are currently five captains, known colloquially as the pirate kings, who wield authority across the Red Fleet. Individually they are powerful, but together they are a match for the forces of any Corporate Nation.

Logician Industries

Originally a civilian research company, Logician Industries were responsible for the creation of the precursor to modern jump technology. It was praised as the greatest achievement of humanity, to travel faster than light with an object of any mass. Once the public celebration has quietened, the SolSys Corporation seized the companies assets and data, in order to be the singular proprietors of the technology. The great minds fled, using the very same technology to cast themselves far from the reach of SolSys. It would be millennia before the name of Logician Industries would rise again, but by that time they had grown from a handful of exiled prodigies, to a galaxy spanning corporation governed by the brightest minds humanity could offer. Their modern technology, developed from entirely different branches of progression from their peers, remains ahead of all others, ensuring their great wealth can be supplemented whenever needed, for buyers would give all that they have for just a single microprocessor of Logician design. While not often the aggressor outside of their territories, their disdain for the Faithful is known to all by word and deed, for the Logicians see their creed as in direct dispute of their own analytical nature, and have burned their own cities, rather than allow Faithful doctrine to grow within them. It is widely understood that only the Hoags regard for the Faithful, has prevented the Logicians from war.

The Faithful

From the earliest days of humanity, religion has been the cause of great strife, more often than not, moulded or claimed by tyrants to bend the common man to their will. But so too, since the earliest days, have those of true faith and belief existed, thrived, and prospered, with a conviction that honours their causes. Though the early days of the SolSys expansion period attempted to suppress all human religions, it simply moved them out of sight. Religious factions that once battled and decried one another now had a common purpose and eventually found the kinship needed to work together, in spite of their antithetical identities. Their power grew in secret, until a thousand star systems each claimed in unity to be the territory of the Faithful, and that they would be defended as such. It is estimated by historians of the period that almost a quarter of a billion ships defected to these regions, the sheer scale of the territorial coup placing it beyond any challenge from effected parties, and so the Faithful were chartered as a Corporate Nation, a place for those of any faith to thrive. They are both a welcome friend and tolerated nuisance among other corporate nations, They strive to mediate peace and fairness among the stars and take no measures to claim new territory, but are often found preaching upon every world, resulting in the loss of civilians and significant wealth from other corporate nations. In modern times, their primary focus is the peace between SolSys and Hoags, for they have witnessed the ruin left in the wake of their wars, and have no greater purpose than to prevent it further.

Scions of Kijani

The Scions are the newest, or rather, most recently formed Corporate Nation. Originally a group of civilians from the Kijani System, their fleet grew through salvage and reclamation of lost ships. They repaired them with great effort, and gave ship posts to other unaffiliated civilians, creating a greater following and expanding their fleets at an extraordinary pace. Eventually, the SolSys Corporation grew troubled by such a gathering of military might, and dispatched fleets not to bargain with them, but to destroy them. Upon entrance to the system, the SolSys fleet was met with a barrage of firepower that remains legend to this day, but the Scions did not sit idle. Their fleet took jump to the home of SolSys themselves, humanities cradle, but did not attack. Instead they made but a single request. Recognise us, they said, and so the Scions of Kijani were instated to the corporate charter. In the centuries since, the Scions have continued their tradition of ship restoration, but now field standard pattern craft of their own. They favour neutrality in Corporate disputes, neither willing, nor wishing, to harm their own standing. They are however, vehemently opposed to the Red Fleets status, seeing it as taken through criminality over genuine labour. For the most part their wealth is generated through their space stations, the vast majority of which were reclaimed, and charge service fees reasonable enough for all parties to pass through their ports, leaving them far from their pauper scrapyard origins, and a universal power to be respected.