Fragile Allegiance
Encyclopedia
Fragile Allegiance is an open-ended 4X
real-time strategy
(RTS) game from Gremlin Interactive
, released in 1996
for MS-DOS
and Windows 95
. The game begins on May 25, 2496 as the player begins their employment with TetraCorp (a large interstellar
megacorporation) who have set up a new asteroid mining
franchise operation in the Fragmented Sectors. There are six alien races
competing with Tetracorp for these resources. Beginning with one building and one million credits, the player is tasked with building up a successful mining operation to sell as much ore as possible to the Federation. Diplomacy is crucial to the success or failure of this franchise operation as the players colonies begin to encroach on one another.
The game features complex diplomacy
between players and includes real-time lip-synced animation
s for in-game actors. Described as a combination of SimCity 2000
, Civilization
and Risk
, Fragile Allegiance uses an icon
based GUI
for all menus and game commands. Unlike other RTS games, there is no defined tech tree, with technology being unlocked by the purchase of 36 blueprints at any time during the course of the game. Fragile Allegiance is the spiritual successor to K240
and there are many similarities between the two.
Fragile Allegiance generally scored well with reviewers, with PC Gamer
UK giving the game the Game of Distinction award and it was praised for its graphics, interface and sound. The game has problems running on Windows XP
and later Windows
versions, as it was designed for MS-DOS and ported to Windows 95.
filled with asteroid
s that are rich in mineral resources. The aim of the game is to colonise and mine the asteroids
for the various ore
s found on them and then sell the ore to the Federation. The player can use the proceeds for empire
expansion, purchasing new technologies, construction of buildings, ships
and missile
s, spying
, trading
and also to pay fines should the Federation impose any. Construction of the various missiles and ships requires quantities of different ores, so the decision to sell to the Federation is not straightforward. The game has a stock market
where commodities can be bought and sold. There is also a black market
offering unauthorised information regarding individual spies and colony supervisors, and illicit trade in rare ores and missiles. The manual states that any TetraCorp employee caught selling ore on the black market will be terminated.
Fragile Allegiance has a simplistic combat system with the player having no direct control over units once a fleet
enters combat. Enemy asteroids can be attacked using ships, missiles and agents. During a battle, laser
beams criss-cross the screen and buildings catch fire
before being destroyed. Ground turrets fire back at attacking ships and anti-missile turrets shoot out incoming missiles.
Small ships are built in a ship yard while the larger ships require a space dock for construction. Ships range from the small Scoutship (used to discover new asteroids), to the gigantic Command Cruiser (which is used for transporting combat fleets over vast distances that they would otherwise be unable to travel without refueling).
Each ship has a limited amount of hardpoint
s to which weapons and other devices can be attached, and ships can be grouped together into fleets.
There are a total of seven races in the game, but only TetraCorp (representing the human race) is playable. Upon discovering an alien race, diplomacy can be initiated in order to arrange actions such as non-aggression pacts and joint-combat treaties
, as well as accuse them of spying or trading with the Mauna (Trading with the Mauna is illegal under Federation law). If a faction is found to be trading with the Mauna, Jane Fong (Federal minister for trade relations in addition to her role as Terran ambassador
for the Fragmented Sectors) can be informed, who will in turn tell the Federation, which could result in increased hostility towards the offending faction from all others or, they can be threatened with blackmail
and forced to pay a tribute
in return for the players silence. Each race has a unique look and diplomatic strategies and everything happens in real time with highly detailed characters that are well animated and lip-synced. One of the factions — The Mauna, are not members of the Federation and are unable to be negotiated or traded with.
As the players empire expands, agents and supervisors will make themselves available for employment. Agents are used for gathering intelligence on alien asteroids and can also be deployed on the players own asteroids for counter-intelligence
. Other uses for agents include deploying APV's and destroying various buildings such as defense installations, life support, production, and other various installations. The chances of an agent successfully completing their mission and escaping detection are increased if there is a spy satellite
orbit
ing the asteroid they are assigned to. Colony Supervisors are able to be employed to help manage the building and maintenance of asteroid colonies
. There is no research in the game, as this popular mechanic is replaced with the Sci-Tek blueprint system which allows players to buy new technologies as needed. Multiplayer is available over an IPX network with TetraCorp being the only playable race.
the last Terran Emperor
Dramon Salaria in 2437 and was established to encourage commercial competition rather than full scale wars between its constituent
parties. The authority of the Federation is constantly challenged — in part by those who helped to create it, and the further away from the Federal center a person is, the less the Federation can influence their day to day lives. The seventh alien culture — the Mauna are not members of the Federation and it is revealed in the game that they are an untrustworthy and cruel species. It is not known if the Mauna were consulted with prior to the creation of the Federation, and trading with the Mauna is frowned upon by the Federation.
Numerous megacorporations exist within the Federation and TetraCorp is one of the largest and oldest. Their sister company is Sci-Tek, which manufactures and supplies most of the technology that the player has access to. Sci-Tek also has blueprints for advanced technologies that the player can purchase. The opening cinematic plays like a corporate recruitment video and at one point is jammed by a Terran male who tells the viewer that TetraCorp has a history of exploiting workers of all races and cultures with low pay and wretched working conditions. The movie is jammed a second time by an Artemian who tells the player that Terran progression was responsible for 68% of all alien mortalities during the past three centuries
and that the reason for this high percentage is due to megacorporations such as TetraCorp.
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.
Fragile Allegiance was marketed as an intense deep space real-time strategy game complete with complex face-to-face diplomacy. It was the first game to use Gremlin Interactive's facial motion capture technology which allowed for highly detailed and realistic looking alien ambassadors, giving depth and adding atmosphere to the games diplomacy. Two versions of the game were released — a Europe
an version and a North America
n version, with each region having different box art. There were two different demo versions, one with audio and one without audio. A cheat code is available for the game and is entered slightly differently between the two versions. For the European version the code is "FRAGILE /cKim.Jon.fmsti", while "FRAGILE /c.Osiris.fmsti" must be entered for the North American version. These codes reward the player with decreased construction time, extra money, the ability to see all asteroids in play, the ability to change the game speed in-game and gives the player access to all of the information in the game.
People report that Fragile Allegiance does not work properly on Windows XP and later Windows platforms, as the game was designed for MS-DOS and ported to Windows 95. The most common issues being reported are no audio, the game failing to start, and the game crashing when trying to rename anything, including saved games. As no patch
was ever released for the game, people have had to use emulator
s such as VDMSound
or DOSBox
in order to get the game to function properly but it may still crash when trying to rename a saved game.
involved once the player's empire got large — although reviewers noted that the latter two could be countered by the "Ore Teleporter blueprint" and Colony Supervisors respectively. There were mixed feelings regarding the replacing of research with the Sci-Tek blueprint system, which meant that any blueprint could be bought in any order provided the player had the money to do so.
The game was also criticised for only having one playable race (TetraCorp). Despite these criticisms PC Gamer UK gave it the Game of Distinction award for Christmas of 1996 stating, "Takes ages to work out what's going on, and immense concentration. But this is completely engrossing." and awarded it a score of 91%. Users of internet gaming site GameSpot
rated Fragile Allegiance significantly higher than the site reviewer, rating it 8.6/10. Gamezilla's review rated it at 75% while GameRankings gave the game a score of 65%.
4X
4X games are a genre of strategy video game in which players control an empire and "explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate." The term was first coined by Alan Emrich in his September 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World...
real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
(RTS) game from Gremlin Interactive
Gremlin Interactive
Gremlin Interactive was a British software house based in Sheffield and working mostly in the home computer market.- History :...
, released in 1996
1996 in video gaming
-Notable releases:*January 29 — Duke Nukem 3D, successor to the simple side-scrolling originals, and a genre-redefining title for first person shooters....
for MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
and Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. The game begins on May 25, 2496 as the player begins their employment with TetraCorp (a large interstellar
Interstellar travel
Interstellar space travel is manned or unmanned travel between stars. The concept of interstellar travel in starships is a staple of science fiction. Interstellar travel is much more difficult than interplanetary travel. Intergalactic travel, or travel between different galaxies, is even more...
megacorporation) who have set up a new asteroid mining
Asteroid mining
Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting raw materials from asteroids and planetoids in space, including near-Earth objects. Minerals and volatiles could be mined from an asteroid or spent comet to provide space construction material , to extract water and oxygen to sustain the lives...
franchise operation in the Fragmented Sectors. There are six alien races
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
competing with Tetracorp for these resources. Beginning with one building and one million credits, the player is tasked with building up a successful mining operation to sell as much ore as possible to the Federation. Diplomacy is crucial to the success or failure of this franchise operation as the players colonies begin to encroach on one another.
The game features complex diplomacy
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
between players and includes real-time lip-synced animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
s for in-game actors. Described as a combination of SimCity 2000
SimCity 2000
SimCity 2000 is a simulation/city building video game and the second installment in the SimCity series. SimCity 2000 was first released by Maxis in 1994 for computers running Apple Macintosh Operating System...
, Civilization
Civilization (series)
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy, 4X video games produced by Sid Meier. Basic gameplay functions are similar throughout the series, namely, buiding a civilization on a macro-scale from prehistory up to the near future...
and Risk
Risk (game)
Risk is a strategic board game, produced by Parker Brothers . It was invented by French film director Albert Lamorisse and originally released in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde in France. Risk is a turn-based game for two to six players...
, Fragile Allegiance uses an icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
based GUI
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
for all menus and game commands. Unlike other RTS games, there is no defined tech tree, with technology being unlocked by the purchase of 36 blueprints at any time during the course of the game. Fragile Allegiance is the spiritual successor to K240
K240
K240 is a real-time strategy computer game developed by Gremlin Graphics Software Ltd in 1994 for the Amiga. It is a sequel to 1991 Amiga game Utopia: The Creation of a Nation.-Story:...
and there are many similarities between the two.
Fragile Allegiance generally scored well with reviewers, with PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
UK giving the game the Game of Distinction award and it was praised for its graphics, interface and sound. The game has problems running on Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
and later Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
versions, as it was designed for MS-DOS and ported to Windows 95.
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in the Fragmented Sectors, an area of outer spaceOuter space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
filled with asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
s that are rich in mineral resources. The aim of the game is to colonise and mine the asteroids
Asteroid mining
Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting raw materials from asteroids and planetoids in space, including near-Earth objects. Minerals and volatiles could be mined from an asteroid or spent comet to provide space construction material , to extract water and oxygen to sustain the lives...
for the various ore
Ore
An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....
s found on them and then sell the ore to the Federation. The player can use the proceeds for empire
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
expansion, purchasing new technologies, construction of buildings, ships
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
and missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
s, spying
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
, trading
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
and also to pay fines should the Federation impose any. Construction of the various missiles and ships requires quantities of different ores, so the decision to sell to the Federation is not straightforward. The game has a stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
where commodities can be bought and sold. There is also a black market
Underground economy
A black market or underground economy is a market in goods or services which operates outside the formal one supported by established state power. Typically the totality of such activity is referred to with the definite article as a complement to the official economies, by market for such goods and...
offering unauthorised information regarding individual spies and colony supervisors, and illicit trade in rare ores and missiles. The manual states that any TetraCorp employee caught selling ore on the black market will be terminated.
Fragile Allegiance has a simplistic combat system with the player having no direct control over units once a fleet
Naval fleet
A fleet, or naval fleet, is a large formation of warships, and the largest formation in any navy. A fleet at sea is the direct equivalent of an army on land....
enters combat. Enemy asteroids can be attacked using ships, missiles and agents. During a battle, laser
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
beams criss-cross the screen and buildings catch fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
before being destroyed. Ground turrets fire back at attacking ships and anti-missile turrets shoot out incoming missiles.
Small ships are built in a ship yard while the larger ships require a space dock for construction. Ships range from the small Scoutship (used to discover new asteroids), to the gigantic Command Cruiser (which is used for transporting combat fleets over vast distances that they would otherwise be unable to travel without refueling).
Each ship has a limited amount of hardpoint
Hardpoint
A hardpoint, or weapon station, is any part of an airframe designed to carry an external load. This includes a point on the wing or fuselage of military aircraft where external ordnance, countermeasures, gun pods, targeting pods or drop tanks can be mounted.-Rail launchers:Large missiles and...
s to which weapons and other devices can be attached, and ships can be grouped together into fleets.
There are a total of seven races in the game, but only TetraCorp (representing the human race) is playable. Upon discovering an alien race, diplomacy can be initiated in order to arrange actions such as non-aggression pacts and joint-combat treaties
Treaty
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms...
, as well as accuse them of spying or trading with the Mauna (Trading with the Mauna is illegal under Federation law). If a faction is found to be trading with the Mauna, Jane Fong (Federal minister for trade relations in addition to her role as Terran ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
for the Fragmented Sectors) can be informed, who will in turn tell the Federation, which could result in increased hostility towards the offending faction from all others or, they can be threatened with blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
and forced to pay a tribute
Tribute
A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...
in return for the players silence. Each race has a unique look and diplomatic strategies and everything happens in real time with highly detailed characters that are well animated and lip-synced. One of the factions — The Mauna, are not members of the Federation and are unable to be negotiated or traded with.
As the players empire expands, agents and supervisors will make themselves available for employment. Agents are used for gathering intelligence on alien asteroids and can also be deployed on the players own asteroids for counter-intelligence
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...
. Other uses for agents include deploying APV's and destroying various buildings such as defense installations, life support, production, and other various installations. The chances of an agent successfully completing their mission and escaping detection are increased if there is a spy satellite
Spy satellite
A spy satellite is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications....
orbit
Orbit
In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet around the center of a star system, such as the Solar System...
ing the asteroid they are assigned to. Colony Supervisors are able to be employed to help manage the building and maintenance of asteroid colonies
Colonization of the asteroids
The asteroids have long been suggested as possible sites for human colonization. This idea is popular in science fiction. Asteroid mining, a proposed industrial process in which asteroids are mined for valuable materials, especially platinum group metals, may be automated or require a crew to...
. There is no research in the game, as this popular mechanic is replaced with the Sci-Tek blueprint system which allows players to buy new technologies as needed. Multiplayer is available over an IPX network with TetraCorp being the only playable race.
Plot
The player begins the game as the latest recruit to TetraCorps mining franchise operation and is tasked with selling as much ore as possible to the Federation, which is a coalition of six of the seven known alien cultures: the Terrans, the Artemia, the Mikotaj, the Achean Gatherings, the Braccatia and the Rigellians. The Federation was inaugurated in 2439 following a coup deposingDeposition (politics)
Deposition by political means concerns the removal of a politician or monarch. It may be done by coup, impeachment, invasion or forced abdication...
the last Terran Emperor
Emperor
An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...
Dramon Salaria in 2437 and was established to encourage commercial competition rather than full scale wars between its constituent
Constituent country
Constituent country is a phrase sometimes used in contexts in which a country makes up a part of a larger entity. The term constituent country does not have any defined legal meaning, and is used simply to refer to a country which is a part Constituent country is a phrase sometimes used in contexts...
parties. The authority of the Federation is constantly challenged — in part by those who helped to create it, and the further away from the Federal center a person is, the less the Federation can influence their day to day lives. The seventh alien culture — the Mauna are not members of the Federation and it is revealed in the game that they are an untrustworthy and cruel species. It is not known if the Mauna were consulted with prior to the creation of the Federation, and trading with the Mauna is frowned upon by the Federation.
Numerous megacorporations exist within the Federation and TetraCorp is one of the largest and oldest. Their sister company is Sci-Tek, which manufactures and supplies most of the technology that the player has access to. Sci-Tek also has blueprints for advanced technologies that the player can purchase. The opening cinematic plays like a corporate recruitment video and at one point is jammed by a Terran male who tells the viewer that TetraCorp has a history of exploiting workers of all races and cultures with low pay and wretched working conditions. The movie is jammed a second time by an Artemian who tells the player that Terran progression was responsible for 68% of all alien mortalities during the past three centuries
Century
A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...
and that the reason for this high percentage is due to megacorporations such as TetraCorp.
Development
Fragile Allegiance is essentially a remake of Gremlin Interactive's 19941994 in video gaming
-Events:*Nintendo calls this year "1994: The Year of the Cartridge".*Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd is established and opened by Hiroshi Yamauchi and effectively ends Mattel Australia's distribution of Nintendo's products throughout Australia.*"Project...
Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
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
Asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...
, 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
Patrick Phelan (composer)
Patrick "Pat" Phelan , is a respected veteran video game audio composer, manager, and producer.-Background:At the age of 11, Phelan's parents presented him with a Commodore VIC-20. He learnt how to programme and began to write games...
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.
Fragile Allegiance was marketed as an intense deep space real-time strategy game complete with complex face-to-face diplomacy. It was the first game to use Gremlin Interactive's facial motion capture technology which allowed for highly detailed and realistic looking alien ambassadors, giving depth and adding atmosphere to the games diplomacy. Two versions of the game were released — a Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an version and a North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n version, with each region having different box art. There were two different demo versions, one with audio and one without audio. A cheat code is available for the game and is entered slightly differently between the two versions. For the European version the code is "FRAGILE /cKim.Jon.fmsti", while "FRAGILE /c.Osiris.fmsti" must be entered for the North American version. These codes reward the player with decreased construction time, extra money, the ability to see all asteroids in play, the ability to change the game speed in-game and gives the player access to all of the information in the game.
People report that Fragile Allegiance does not work properly on Windows XP and later Windows platforms, as the game was designed for MS-DOS and ported to Windows 95. The most common issues being reported are no audio, the game failing to start, and the game crashing when trying to rename anything, including saved games. As no patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
was ever released for the game, people have had to use emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s such as VDMSound
VDMSound
VDMSound is an open source emulator of legacy sound card devices, designed to allow video games and other applications written for MS-DOS to run on the Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/95/98/Me operating systems...
or DOSBox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
in order to get the game to function properly but it may still crash when trying to rename a saved game.
Reception
Fragile Allegiance was generally well received, achieving average to good scores from reviewers. It was praised for its graphics and icon driven interface which was considered slick and well integrated but a little confusing at first. Reviewers noted that after figuring out what all the icons did the game was immensely engrossing, with the player always having something to do. The game was criticised for its difficulty, its simplistic combat model, the time spent transporting ore between asteroids, and the large amount of micromanagementMicromanagement (computer gaming)
In gaming, micromanagement describes minor, detailed gameplay elements that must be manually addressed by the player. It appears in a wide range of games including strategy video games, construction and management simulations and pet-raising simulations...
involved once the player's empire got large — although reviewers noted that the latter two could be countered by the "Ore Teleporter blueprint" and Colony Supervisors respectively. There were mixed feelings regarding the replacing of research with the Sci-Tek blueprint system, which meant that any blueprint could be bought in any order provided the player had the money to do so.
The game was also criticised for only having one playable race (TetraCorp). Despite these criticisms PC Gamer UK gave it the Game of Distinction award for Christmas of 1996 stating, "Takes ages to work out what's going on, and immense concentration. But this is completely engrossing." and awarded it a score of 91%. Users of internet gaming site GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
rated Fragile Allegiance significantly higher than the site reviewer, rating it 8.6/10. Gamezilla's review rated it at 75% while GameRankings gave the game a score of 65%.