United Colonies of Man

The United Colonies of Man or UCM are one of the factions representing humanity in Dropzone 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 one full year after the white sphere issued its warning.

Invasion

Two day after the separatists left the Scourge attacked. Across all the Cradle worlds, the Scourge quickly swept aside all resistance both in space as well as on the ground. Less than 1% were able to escape Earth against the onslaught.

The Golden age of humanity was over.

Technology

Vehicles

UCM vehicles are utilitarian in appearance and 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.

Weapons

One of the most recognizable trait of most of the UCM are there 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.