DEEP SPACE
ASCENDING
A MERCENARY UNIT. A LIVING GALAXY. YOUR LEGACY.
You start as a single mercenary pilot in a galaxy that doesn't revolve around you. Eight superpower factions wage their own wars. Twenty-plus frontier states scheme on the periphery. The wild frontier — half the known universe — runs without rules.
You and your unit grow from that single Core into a lance, a company, a battalion, a regiment. You take contracts. You earn reputation. You accept a House commission, or you don't. You become a legend, a pirate king, a periphery house leader — or you die trying.
Permadeath. One save. The galaxy resets when you fall. Your callsign stays in the Hall of Fame.
Async WeGo combined-arms hex wargame. Mobile-playable. Strategic depth without simultaneous-online requirements. Combat resolved via Avalon Hill-tradition CRT mechanics.
// MERCENARY POV
You are never the faction. The factions are always AI-driven. You navigate as a participant, not a controller.
// COMBINED ARMS
Cores, vehicles, infantry, aerospace, capital ships. Combined arms doctrine matters.
// LIVING GALAXY
4,000+ star systems at full universe. AI factions wage their own wars. The galaxy doesn't wait for you.
// PERMADEATH
One save. Hardcore. The universe regenerates when you fall — but the Hall of Fame remembers.
// DESIGN LINEAGE
- Hex wargame tradition: Avalon Hill, SPI, GMT — Roberts, Dunnigan, Hill, Herman, Ruhnke
- Mech combat heritage: BattleTech (Jordan Weisman, FASA, 1984)
- Visual lineage: Crescent Hawk's Inception (Westwood Studios, 1988)
- Aesthetic direction: Macross / Robotech
- Async pacing: Empire of the Sun, COIN series, Words With Friends discipline
DSA ships with generic free stock art as the baseline — sourced from public-domain and free-commercial-use libraries that anyone could find online. It's intentionally the floor, not a finished product.
But every art element — every Core, every building, every music track, every UI element — is a slot that can hold multiple alternative versions. Working artists list their own takes on the GameReady AI marketplace. Players who want distinctive art in their install buy it directly from artists — artist gets 80-85% of every sale.
Two players can play DSA with completely different art for the same Core, the same building, the same UI. Each player funded the artist of their choice directly. As long as DSA is alive and growing, artists have a perpetual demand engine pointing players at their work.
DSA isn't an AI replacement for artists. DSA creates artist demand — perpetually — by making their work directly purchasable by players via the marketplace. The generic baseline is the floor; artists are the ceiling.