Old Mars is built atop of an aging set of colonies that were formed shortly after populations fled Earth for space. The major players who established its large network of Martian malls were the neoAmericans and it was funded by one of the high tech Asian tigers. Geo engineered and terraformed from the Martian rock/landscape itself, it became an Earth away from Earth. What once was a democracy yielded a corporatocracy rather quickly and in space nobody can hear you antitrust. They make and peddle various products but without a steady supply of buyers people on Old Mars wound up finding themselves all selling to each other since they were all sellers. As a result, all over the place again and again, what was once a thriving trade mecca became a literal ghost town and the economy on Old Mars is precarious at best. It's been dwarfed in popularity by other areas such as Cogwerk Port in recent years but they remain a presence in the galaxy market. If you have something older that is used second hand, look for an MoM stamp on it... that means Made on Mars. Old Mars isn't as active a manufacturer as they were in the past but they still do a few specialty requests. Their services can surely be purchased by those with enough ferrite, bioptics or niode. One such service is ordering designer genes; One of the most stable industries on Old Mars that has been a mainstay throughout its tumultuous history is biotechnology and you can usually distinguish a genetic engineer who hails from Old Mars by their neoAmerican accent.
As one of the older colonies of Occupied Space Old Mars struggles to find a relevant modern identity to fit into the Niode Gate Age of deep space exploration. Recognizing the popularity of mecha battles on other colonies outside the Sol system, the merchant consortium of Old Mars decided they want to cash in on it too so they shifted efforts to raising some of their own mech pilots in the hopes of revitalizing the ailing economy of Old Mars Colony. They aren't in any sense a big player in interstellar politics and as such aren't considered a true faction, functioning more first as a corporate entity than anything else and as such can be considered a neutral affiliation.
Submitted by Mycobacter#712744
