Nomad Imperium Academy

Built to be flown

Every House sends its best to Foundation Three. Here is what waits for you in the seat: a living cockpit, flight with weight, kills that land, and servers you can run yourself.

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3D cockpits5 HousesCadet to Wing Commander botsEverything moddable

Your seat

Strap in. This is your ship.

Every fighter is flown from a full 3D cockpit, tight, rugged and lived-in. Nothing floats in a menu: the dials, switches and lamps you read are the ship itself.

Working instruments: gauges, power readouts and caution lamps wired to the real ship state
Cockpit light that flares when your guns fire and when the hull takes a hit
Canopy glass with scuffs and reflections, and the sun burning through the struts
A real ejection seat. Pull the handle and get out alive

The ejection seat, from over the pilot's shoulder

Our own engine

Light, glow and wreckage that look the part.

Foundation Three runs on a custom Rust engine, so how it looks, how it plays and how it connects were designed as one thing.

Physically based materials lit by each map's own sun and sky
Wide, soft bloom: engine flames, bolts and lamps glow properly without washing out
Sun shadows crisp enough to read a canopy strut
Triplanar rock shading, so asteroids and moons never show a seam
Capital ships that break apart, piece by piece
The vapour cloud: hide in it and break the lock

Flight

Weight you can feel.

Ships have inertia. The nose follows the stick, but momentum has its say. Learn to use it and you will outfly anyone.

Inertial flight with drift, boost and braking turns
Power management: move energy between engines, weapons and shields mid-fight
Directional shields that flare and recharge, so every fight is about angles
Land on a friendly barge through a lit approach corridor to rearm and repair

A hard turn: the ship keeps its momentum

Combat

Fast kills. Real stakes.

Fights are short and decided by skill. The best pilots finish a duel in seconds; newer pilots get room to learn.

Lasers with a lead indicator and clear hit feedback
Lock-on missiles, torpedoes and bombs, and chaff to shake a lock
Collisions that hurt, for fighters and capital ships alike
Capital ships with facings, destroyable parts and turrets

Laser fire from the cockpit, with a missile warning and chaff count

Loadouts

Arm it your way.

Four slots decide how your fighter plays: laser, missile, shield cell, engine. Pick them on the arming screen before the fight, on respawn, or while clamped to a friendly barge.

Trade-offs, not upgrades: a quick-recharge cell or a deep one, a sprinter engine or a steady one
Every part is a data file, so servers and modders can add their own

The arming screen: pick your parts and see how they compare with stock

Bots

Always someone to fly against.

Bots follow the same rules you do: the same turn limits, shields and weapons. They fly in ranks from Cadet to Wing Commander, so you can practise at your level, then climb.

A bot pilot in a hard turn, trailing exhaust

Maps

Places worth fighting over.

Bounded arenas with real scale: deep rifts of rock, barges that double as home bases, and flagships to defend.

Landing barges for repair and rearm
Fleet Battle: two teams, one flagship to defend
Every map names its own sky

Servers

Fair fights, anywhere.

Dedicated servers decide what is real. Your ship responds instantly, and the server settles every hit.

Server-authoritative: clients send inputs, never state
Prediction tested under heavy lag and packet loss
Hit rewind: what you aimed at is what you hit
Quick Fight finds you a match, and Create a server starts your own, then stops it when the fight is over

Create a server: choose the rules and start your own

Modding

Make it yours.

Ships, weapons, parts, maps, modes, bot ranks and server rules are plain JSON files, checked before a fight starts. Built-in ship and map editors let you shape them in the game.

Mods layer over the base game
A bad file is an error you can read, never a broken match
The engine core stays closed, so servers stay trustworthy

// data/parts/engine_sprinter.json
{
  "name": "Sprinter",
  "slot": "engine",
  "blurb": "High top speed, slow to build it back.",
  "mods": { "max_speed": { "set": 108.0 } }
}

Sound

A mood you can hear.

Our own sound effects, and music chosen track by track to carry the quiet, uneasy calm of the Academy.

Take your seat

Join the pilots shaping the Academy, and be there when the doors open.

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