Factions/Grand Fleet

The Grand Fleet are rich early game but quickly lose steam. Recommended for experienced players who can scrounge up an economy for the late game.

## Background

A Jubilee: the sporadic meeting of nomadic fleets. A time of great joy and change as new opportunities open for the unfortunate, where clan and personal allegiances can change, and fleets can grow or shrink. The more wealthy and powerful a fleet is, and the more open to immigration, the greater still it will become.

Most fleets have a de facto maximum size before disunity of purpose and ideals divide them. New city ships are built over thousands of years for just this purpose.

The Grand Fleet is the one exception. A society that is utterly accepting of outsiders and offers such promises of wealth and prosperity that it only grows with each chance meeting.

## The Confluence

Our brethren sought us out, not to join us but to ask us to join something even greater. We cannot refuse a call to the greatest jubilee. Our wealth will marvel the aliens, our culture will delight them.

And yet, for the first time in recorded history, we know the fear of the smaller fleets. What if this thing is too large? What if our wealth is not enough? Will we dissolve into the greater society, or can we find a path to remain vital even as the aliens outpace us?

## Gameplay Information

* Starts rich but low growth potential.
* Zero colony support.
* Cards need fleet support.
* Produces orbital factories.

### Fleet Support

Im'dril fleets provide a number of Fleet Support to help run certain economic converters. The portion of the economic card on the left shows how much Fleet Support it needs to run that converter (1 support).

The card above and to the right is a fleet card and indicates how much Fleet Support it provides (3 support). To run a converter, each fleet symbol at the top left must be matched with a symbol in the center of a fleet card. The support from a single fleet can be broken up among multiple cards, and a single card may be supported by multiple fleets.

If the Im'dril trade their cards to another player, they will need to loan enough fleets with them or that player will not be able to run the economic converters on those cards. If the Im'dril accept cards from another player that lack. the above symbols, they do not need to support those .cards to run the converters on them.

### The Grand Fleet

The Grand Fleet starts with five Fleet Support and has no way to gain more. As an Im'dril fleet, they use the Im'dril technology cards.

### No Colonies

The Grand Fleet starts with no colony support. So long as its colony support is not increased by another species, "it must discard all of its colonies at the beginning of the Economy Phase. Colonies may still be bid on but will need to be consumed or traded away.

### Orbital Factories

Orbital Construction, and its upgrade, Anchorages, create factory tokens. When you create new factories, you may choose any token of the matching background (light or dark) that is not yet in the game. Factory tokens are freely tradeable. Any player may permanently attach at most one factory token to each colony to increase the colony's production. If a colony is upgraded, it keeps any factory on it.

If a colony is removed from play (due to being consumed or because it exceeded a colony support limit), the factory token is returned to you and can be created again.

### Caylion Plutocracy

The Caylion Plutocracy ability to double the production of a colony does not apply to any factory on that colony.

## Advice

The Grand Fleet starts the game incredibly wealthy but has few directions for growth. One path is to invent a few early technologies and shift your economy towards running those. That said, you'll never run more than five of your own cards, so there's a hard limit to how far technology can take you. Another solution is to rent other players' cards. You can make such renting" permanent by convincing the other player to give you the card every turn, for the rest of the game.

A third solution is to loan resources to the other players in return for a profit next turn, or some resources each turn for the rest of the game. You should be able to make a 30-50% profit over a turn boundary. As for trades where you receive resources every turn, you should be willing to pay three times those resources on turn one.

Orbital Factories are worth about 2½ small cubes on turn 2, decreasing over the game. If you win a bid for a colony and attach a Factory to it, that is worth about 5 small cubes on turn 2, reducing by 1 small each turn thereafter.