United Colonies of Man
The United Colonies of Man or UCM are one of the factions representing humanity in Dropzone Commander and Dropfleet Commander. Consisting of the remaining frontier planets that are still under control by humanity. Their sole goal is to reclaim the Cradle Worlds from the Scourge.
Pre-History
With the discovery of fusion technology and FTL drives, humanity entered a golden age of advancement and discovery. Eventually humanity makes first contact with the Shaltari. At first the Shaltari were friendly and showed humanity a number of colonizable worlds. Later it was discovered that the Shaltari were only doing this in order to use Humanity as cheap foot soldiers for their wars against other Shaltari tribes. Needless to say, this did not go over well.
The White Sphere
One day, a tennis ball sized white sphere descended into earths atmosphere and landed in Peru. The sphere, despite its small size, required two men to carry it. The sphere was quickly brought to a lab in South America to be analyzed. As soon as the sphere was linked to a computer with a network connection, the entire lab went into lock down and every single computer on the continent was hacked. Hours later, from inside the locked down facility, explosions could be heard from outside. Later after the lockdown had been lifted, it was discovered that the sphere had been stolen. Days later a single message was broadcast through out all inhabited world on all channels warning humanity of impending doom and to go to Talon IV one year from now in order to survive. This caused a lot of civil unrest and divided humanity between those who wished to flee and follow the sphere's warning and those who wanted to ignore it. This culminated in a massive space battle over Talon IV between the abandonists and the EAA Navy one full year after the white sphere issued its warning.
Two day after the separatists left the Scourge attacked. Across all the Cradle worlds, Massive alien fleets simultaneously emerged from foldspace and raced to the Cradle worlds and darkened the skies with bizarre dropships carrying sinister vehicles and payloads. The Scourge quickly swept aside all resistance both in space as well as on the ground. Only 10% of the human population survived the Scourge invasion and less than 1% were able to escape Earth against the onslaught.
The Golden age of humanity was over.
Rebuilding
Those that could fled the Cradle Worlds to the Frontier worlds, minor colonies on the edge of human controlled space. For a long time the frontier worlds lived in the shadow of the Cradle worlds and were often ignored by the more sophisticated and decadent societies. Needless to say the small colonies were surprised when fleets of refugees that had escaped the Scourge invasion arrived over their worlds. Fearing the Scourge may soon come to the frontier world, many braced for the inevitable slaughter that would take place. But, the Scourge never came. Why the Scourge never attacked the frontier worlds is still a mystery. Not willing to risk another invasion, the Frontier worlds scrambled their jump nodes so nobody from outside the colonies could jump in. In the following 160 years, the massive influx of refugees plus a rise in birth rates lead to a population explosion across all colonies who now called themselves the United Colonies of Mankind. The resource rich frontier worlds were exploited to their fullest. Cities grew at an amazing speed. The new civilization became highly militant both out of fear the Scourge would find the Frontier worlds but also from a burning lust for revenge. State of the art battle-fleets were constructed and factories cranked out advanced war-machines and armaments to wage a crusade to take back mankind's lost colonies.
Technology
Vehicles
UCM's vehicles are utilitarian in appearance as they prefer function over form. Their tanks normally only have one crew member that lies prone inside. This is helped by the fact that most of the systems and functions in the tank are automated to a degree. Their fleet ships often feature a bifurcated design, and are well armored.
Weapons
One of the most recognizable traits of most of the UCM vehicles are their folding weapons. Most of the weapons on their vehicles are mounted on giant folding arms that can be raised and lowered. Their tanks can even raise their weapons above cover to fire as the main body stays safely behind cover. Spacecraft typically feature either turret-based weaponry that covers a wide range of firing arcs, or powerful spinal-mounted lasers that can burn through enemy craft.
