Custom Factions: Trench Dog edition

[Trench Dog]

So figured to just make a full on new topic, because some of the ideas and other stuff have changed over the years.

For those of you unaware- I had an account here by the name of ComradeCrimson. Changed to this one instead because this is my more commonly used alias and quite frankly its been so long I forgot the login details and didn't want to bother using it anyways.

Given now that I have a fair bit more skill, stability, etc I can easily crank out stuff; that said I also have new ideas regarding factions.

So first things first: There was my old faction, the only one I really bothered to complete-

The United Army of Humanity. Which after some basic fiddling I found you couldn't give a secret project to a faction without some serious fiddling and exact matches with the text; in addition to some other balance concerns I gave them different bonuses.


So for now, here's a finished faction:


The Terran Hegemony, otherwise known as the Hegemony.

A totalitarian faction focused on eugenics and the genetic manipulation of its followers to create a new human race, and to replace the native flora and fauna with that of Earth based life forms, however modified to overtake the planet. The marshal values control and proclaims that it was the likes of bickering human factions that caused the collapse of Earth and instead wishes to guide humanity's evolution into something survivable and completely unified under one banner.

Gameplay wise in testing they are very good at expansion and production, but they suffer with research and are vulnerable to probes. Definitely a very strong aggressive faction too due to their production, and they will need a lot of military due to their poor relationship with Planet.

Comes with a custom graphics set, voice over and unique text.


Here's their datalinks descripton:
#DATALINKS1
^LEADER: {Marshal Humphrey Rodderick}
^BACKGROUND: {UN Peacekeeping Force, British Royal Bio Command}
^AGENDA: {Totalitarian Eugenics Regime}
^Genetic Controls: {Free PUNISHMENT SPHERES at each base}

#DATALINKS2
^+2 SUPPORT:   {Genetic castes commit all resources}
^-5 PLANET: {Actively purges alien life and disturbs ecosystem}
^-2 ECONOMY:  {Genetically modified population not skilled with commerce}
^Genetic Castes: {Free GENEJACK FACTORY at each base}
^{May not use Democratic politics.}

I'll be producing some different factions over time; overall I want to try some new crazy strategies out and work with some cool themes. For the most part I find the original factions cover a lot of the ideological bases pretty well and are flexible, but always room for crazy experimentation I suppose.

[bvanevery]

I'm a little confused at how the Marshal believes others are demagogues, yet he runs a totalitarian regime.  Does he have an unironic complete lack of awareness of what he's doing?

I ask because in my study of various real world dictators, notably Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin, they pretty much seem to know exactly what they're doing.  They might tell other people all sorts of stories about so-and-so being evil, but it's gaslighting / propaganda.  They know they're all playing the same game with people's heads, and that it's about power.  This became very apparent to observers as Stalin was climbing to power, when Politburo meetings were becoming ideologically strained, with all sorts of rubbish uttered just to paint someone else badly for a day or two.  Then the completely opposite views would be held next week!  All just words; smarter people more interested in survival, recognized the posturing for exactly what it was, and kept their heads down because Stalin was going to be the winner.

As for the gameplay, doesn't -5 PLANET mean you cough and the whole world floods?  Particularly with Genejack Factories to egg it on.

A Punishment Sphere driven society is an interesting idea.  People can neither be unhappy nor excel.  In my mod I deliberately made the spheres cheap and available early, as torturing people to keep them in line really shouldn't need any special arrangements.  I might use them for distant cities, if I'm not obliterating everything.

[Trench Dog]

I'm a little confused at how the Marshal believes others are demagogues, yet he runs a totalitarian regime.  Does he have an unironic complete lack of awareness of what he's doing?

I ask because in my study of various real world dictators, notably Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin, they pretty much seem to know exactly what they're doing.  They might tell other people all sorts of stories about so-and-so being evil, but it's gaslighting / propaganda.  They know they're all playing the same game with people's heads, and that it's about power.  This became very apparent to observers as Stalin was climbing to power, when Politburo meetings were becoming ideologically strained, with all sorts of rubbish uttered just to paint someone else badly for a day or two.  Then the completely opposite views would be held next week!  All just words; smarter people more interested in survival, recognized the posturing for exactly what it was, and kept their heads down because Stalin was going to be the winner.

As for the gameplay, doesn't -5 PLANET mean you cough and the whole world floods?  Particularly with Genejack Factories to egg it on.

A Punishment Sphere driven society is an interesting idea.  People can neither be unhappy nor excel.  In my mod I deliberately made the spheres cheap and available early, as torturing people to keep them in line really shouldn't need any special arrangements.  I might use them for distant cities, if I'm not obliterating everything.

Probably need to re-write it, but yeah he knows what he's doing and he is interested in power. That's just his justification, I should probably re-write the description to pinpoint that better. The man is rather extreme as a whole and there's no real skirting around that. An ends justifies the means type of person.

As for the -5 planet, yeah- that and native life becomes more and more hostile faster. And this is representative of the rampant, unchecked genetic modification he does and wanton destruction of the environment for "humanity's progress." Stuff like damming rivers, rerouting them, tearing out native flora and fauna and replacing it with genetically modified stock of Earth flora and fauna and completely disregarding the ecology for the sake of his faction's totalitarian ideals of forced human evolution.

Edited the previous post now to something more suitable with the faction description.

[bvanevery]

Is he going to make a million bucks harvesting stupid mindworms?

Ideally, he would be prohibited from making mindworms.  But I don't know that that's possible for a faction.

If -5 PLANET isn't bad enough, you could also give the faction a negative PSI "bonus" in the faction.txt.  Assuming a negative number works.

[Trench Dog]

Part of his income does actually come from slaughtering mind worms, yes.

As for further negatives bonuses I don't think its necessary, I tested it both as a player and an AI.

Player wise its easy to get powerful but anyone who has a tech advantage on you can seriously punish you hard. Playing on Thinker difficulty, I ran into and started to struggle, and  who managed to build up relatively undisturbed also posed some issues for me too. Morgan and the University had a tough time dealing with me as they bordered me, but overall the faction seems fairly well balanced I feel. Unity Army (suggestions welcome on a name btw) is definitely industrially strong but is crap at research and gets kind of stagnant when it comes to discovering techs. Probe teams seem to be pretty decent options for them though.

The AI needs some further testing but from what I seen the AI doesn't capitalize on the bonuses as well as a person does and they seem to be like a more belligerent and uncooperative Free Drones faction in a way.

[bvanevery]

As for naming suggestions, I don't have anything specific yet, but I do have some thoughts on thematic relevance. 

"Unity" is really off the mark.  This faction is exactly the opposite of anything the Unity mission stood for: squabblers are wrong, only the Marshal is right.  "Unification" or "Unifying" might work better, and would definitely be a kind of doublespeak.  It also connotes a cult to some of us, because of the Unification Church, so that may or may not be a reason to use or avoid it.  My instinct is to stay away from "unification / unity" words and find something else, but I wouldn't pronounce final judgment on that, in the absence of anything concrete.

"Army" is a bad choice.  The Spartans do an army, that's their schtick.  Your faction is about genetic control.  Way back in the days of Gamma World, one of their factions was the "Knights of Genetic Purity".  I'm pretty sure the acronym was meant to resemble the KKK, although who knows maybe also the KGB.  That's not an explicit suggestion, that's just an idea of where genetics and eugenics might lead you.

All this war with Planet implies a lot of terraforming.  "Earth First" is a phrase that immediately leaps to mind, as to what the political consciousness of this faction might be like.  "Earth Makers".  "Originalists".  "Homeworld".  I'm imagining a sort of Earth nativist movement, rather explicitly racist and speciest.  Sort of thing Donald [Sleezebag] might like to be in charge of, but worse.  "@#ck Planet."  "Make Earth Great Again!"  "Planet is a @##thole."

The Eugemony?

[Trench Dog]

As for naming suggestions, I don't have anything specific yet, but I do have some thoughts on thematic relevance. 

"Unity" is really off the mark.  This faction is exactly the opposite of anything the Unity mission stood for: squabblers are wrong, only the Marshal is right.  "Unification" or "Unifying" might work better, and would definitely be a kind of doublespeak.  It also connotes a cult to some of us, because of the Unification Church, so that may or may not be a reason to use or avoid it.  My instinct is to stay away from "unification / unity" words and find something else, but I wouldn't pronounce final judgment on that, in the absence of anything concrete.

"Army" is a bad choice.  The Spartans do an army, that's their schtick.  Your faction is about genetic control.  Way back in the days of Gamma World, one of their factions was the "Knights of Genetic Purity".  I'm pretty sure the acronym was meant to resemble the KKK, although who knows maybe also the KGB.  That's not an explicit suggestion, that's just an idea of where genetics and eugenics might lead you.

All this war with Planet implies a lot of terraforming.  "Earth First" is a phrase that immediately leaps to mind, as to what the political consciousness of this faction might be like.  "Earth Makers".  "Originalists".  "Homeworld".  I'm imagining a sort of Earth nativist movement, rather explicitly racist and speciest.  Sort of thing Donald [Sleezebag] might like to be in charge of, but worse.  "@#ck Planet."  "Make Earth Great Again!"  "Planet is a @##thole."

The Eugemony?

Eugemony sounds pretty good; and yeah they aren't racist. It's not a faction of Nazis trying to make some idealized Aryan or something, rather a faction literally creating genetic castes of people to do different jobs and biddings, forming humanity into an almost eusocial type of society that is easily controlled by the likes of Marshal Rodderick. Some parallels could be made to the Hive but the Hive does it through social experimentation and indoctrination with the veneered aim to find "utopia" (when its really just Yang having complete control) where as Rodderick is literally just modifying humans to suit his purposes.

In addition to that- you are absolutely correct on the Earth First mentality. They want the "purity of Terran life forms" and to create a new Earth essentially- as Planet and planet mind are a complete affront to their ideals.


Another naming idea- The Eugenic Mandate, or Eugenic Mandate. Thoughts?

[bvanevery]

"Mandate" doesn't mean anything to me.  It is phonetically similar to "Mandarin" and makes me think of Chinese, ala The Manchurian Candidate.

The Genejacks would fit the game's lore, except that then it would be Chairman Yang's gift to industry.  That sort of nomenclature might be worth playing with though.

The Genecutters?  "Why then, can we not cut one code here, and start another there?"

[Trench Dog]

Evolutionary Regime? Evolving humanity for the future, and the planet?

Will ponder on this more a bit, I do intend to make some other factions too. I had some ideas for a few joke factions too that I'll make soon enough.

[bvanevery]

They're not doing Evolution though.  They're doing the opposite: Intelligent Design.  So I don't think evolution or evolutionary is on the right track.

"Gene Stealers" is an image that comes to my mind, sorta ala Bladerunner, but not appropriate for a faction name.

[Trench Dog]

They're not doing Evolution though.  They're doing the opposite: Intelligent Design.  So I don't think evolution or evolutionary is on the right track.

"Gene Stealers" is an image that comes to my mind, sorta ala Bladerunner, but not appropriate for a faction name.

By the technical term of evolution, you are absolutely correct they are not "evolving" they are intelligently designing the human race.

But was just meaning theme wise.

The Terran/Earth Guard? Has that authoritarian sound to it, they value the idealism and romanticism of Earth and its original state.

[DeepWoodsSaint]

Maybe something like the Essentialist Guard/Ascendancy/Hegemony/Enactors?
From a Platonic, philosophical standpoint, they mean to bring about the idealistic, perfected 'essence' of humanity once more, in the face of Planet's perceived, real 'imperfection'...but it is a little high-falutin'.

[Trench Dog]

Terran Hegemony. There we go. I'll go with that.


As for now; here's a joke faction I made. I suggest just booting it up and trying it out.



For those who are fans of DriveTribe/Old Top Gear, I was bored and inspired off of watching youtube videos.

[bvanevery]

Sinking cars.  I used to drive something like that!

[Trench Dog]

Glad you didn't sink with it!


Also, updated the Terran Hegemony with the new name.