 Fragile Allegiance is essentially a remake of Gremlin Interactive's 1994 Amiga game K240, with the graphics and user interface revamped for the improved PC hardware available at the time. The core gameplay elements of K240 are retained; the game is set in an asteroid belt, the Sci-Tek blueprint system replaces research and the player is tasked with building up a successful mining operation. Many of the buildings, ships and missiles have the same names and functions as those in K240 and in both games there are six alien races competing against the player. The soundtrack for the game was composed by Patrick Phelan who also composed the soundtrack for K240. The game was released in 1996 and competed against other empire building titles such as Ascendancy and Master of Orion 2.
