If there were seven human factions in SMAX, what would the remaining two be?

[Nexii]

Yea. I ended up giving Morgan additional economic bonuses to put them over Angels in that regard. Overall I boosted the other factions 'up' to about the level of stock University.

Maybe I'll come up with something better. But +1 ECONOMY is the best I can think of thematically for now. WallStreetBets and stock/crypto investing, that crowd is very Data Angel-ish.

[bvanevery]

I gave the Cyborgs that role.  As well as the Cybernetic social engineering choice.

[MilesBeyond]

It's tricky because both conceptually and mechanically there's not a whole lot of ground that the existing factions don't cover. Mechanically really the only thing missing is a +Growth faction, and I use the term "missing" loosely because frankly the game's better off without them. So instead you'd need to go the route and have bonuses that are mostly off the table, but even then I'm not sure that the game is missing anything. The only thing I can think of that would both fill an unoccupied niche and fit the lore of the game is some sort of Human Supremacist faction that gets bonuses like faster fungus clearing and modifiers vs indigenous lifeforms.

[bvanevery]

The Believers became my +GROWTH faction, as did my Theocratic.  I'm not convinced it's actually all that important or great as a mechanic.  I spent a very long time preventing pop boom from happening.  Under long term playtesting, I came to the conclusion that I'd overcorrected, that straitjacketing pop booming wasn't so necessary or helpful to the playability of the game.  So I mildly added the possibility back in.

My Theocratic gives +2 GROWTH, so with sufficient additional investments, you could do a pop boom early game.  Of course the "sufficient additional investments" are onerous enough, that most factions wouldn't be able to pull it off in practice.  That's deliberate on my part.  I do wonder if Theocratic Morganites could do it though.  I haven't played them enough times to know what they're capable of.  Early game with the Morganites, I tend to go Democratic Green, to get all the supply pod money.

[MilesBeyond]

Hmmm, that's interesting. I suppose it's true that in early game drones and even nuts can be a larger barrier to pop-booming than actually achieving pop-boom. Although I also play almost exclusively with Blind Research so nuts would probably be a larger barrier for me than they would be for someone who can beeline Crawlers.

As an aside, I feel a little bad for the SMAX team. I can just imagine EA saying to them "Okay guys, we need seven new factions to sell this expansion." So not only do you get new factions that don't make a lot of sense based on the game lore, but the original seven covered most of the game's bases enough that aside from Sven the new human factions end up intruding on the niches occupied by other factions.

[bvanevery]

Yeah, if the game industry were composed of "golden contractors" who got paid big dollars to cough out meh stuff, I wouldn't feel bad for the expansion devs.  They were probably more like a bunch of nerve stapled drones.

"Suck like a Data Angel."  I'm gonna meditate on this phrase for awhile.  I could be kicking another version of my mod out the door, if it weren't for this conundrum.

Maybe I need to partly bring back crappy mind control game mechanics, on a limited faction basis.  Data Angels could have the abilities of normal factions in the original game.  Hive and Cyborgs could have 1.5x mind control cost.  All other factions have 2x cost, that's my new baseline of sanity.

Hm, my Hive and Cyborgs are already set at 1.5x cost, as are the Data Angels.  They hardly ever take over anything and aren't what I'd call a credible mind control threat.  Guess I might have to try some playtesting with Sid Meier's game design advice: double it!

[bvanevery]

I never did think Sid Meier's idea was basically any good.

Details PROBECOST 50 is silly

PROBECOST 50 is silly

That's my capitol just to the west.  I don't think the Data Angels have more than just this 1 armored probe team they get at the beginning of the game.  Since it's Mission Year 2167 and I've seen it wandering around for a long time near me, I'm surprised it hasn't gotten killed.  It took 2 Scouts from me.  The 2nd time, a Truce had developed and I was authorized to go to war, so I did so.

Well I wanted to know how irritating PROBECOST 50 would be in the real world, and the answer is, pretty darned irritating!  The Data Angels can actually take over a city next to my capitol for no justifiable reason, when my developing offensive against my neighbors was otherwise just fine.  I was fully armored with Synth Police, had finished a Recon Rover prototype, and was about to unleash a horde of them on the Gaians.

Guess I'll try PROBECOST 75, the same setting as the original game.  Not gonna be shocked if that sucks too.

[The_Reckoning]

I like the analysis in the thread so far.

bvanevery is on the right track pointing out Morgan is the only one themed around energy.

I'd argue that mechanical bonuses/penalties come first, then create the lore/politics to fit after.

e.g. (there's more than listed, but these are the first which come to mind)
  - Probe, Rush/Low Tech
 ,  - Planet
  - Police, Low Energy
  - High Energy, Low Pop, -Planet
  - High Pop
  - High Morale, Low Ind (fewer units)
  - Research, High Drones
  - ++Planet, Low Econ/Ind
  - Research, Low Growth
  - Probe
  - High Ind, Low Research
 ; - Naval Conquest

So I'd create new factions based on combinations of these mechanical traits not already used. And then make sure they fit with the other 5 if they're in the xpac.

I'll propose this one for now:
+Morale, +Energy, -Growth, -Efficiency - A military-industrial complex corporate dictatorship themed faction.
Strong, business-friendly laws but bureaucratic. Cannot be democratic - no planet penalty as while they're corporate, they're highly regulated.
This pits them in league with  but also opposed since they'd view him as a liability, in the same way  would. In league with on personal liberties but opposed on materialism. Opposes nicely to both and  for expansion theme. For tying into the origin stories, Morgan was funding the ship but who built it? It probably went to the lowest bidder, knowing how government contracts generally go.

E: Thought of another combination
++Growth, +Ind, -Morale, -Police, -Planet - While there's already Deidre for the 'eco hippies', there's nobody representing the non-ecowarrior pacifist type. I know the Peacekeepers are in name but they don't really reflect it, since they're still a major bureaucracy. So I'd propose a somewhat decentralised, terraforming focused faction but who aren't friendly to planet, while also being pacifistic. The hobbits of Alpha Centauri, I suppose. Limited from using Police State. Opposes directly, and most of the other factions for not being so 'warlike'. Even Domai and Roze are fairly antagonistic.

[bvanevery]

I'll propose this one for now:
+Morale, +Energy, -Growth, -Efficiency - A military-industrial complex corporate dictatorship themed faction.

Did 3 out of 4 in my mod.  Note Power social engineering choice:

Details social engineering in SMACX AI Growth mod version 1.49

social engineering in SMACX AI Growth mod version 1.49

Granted, I recast Efficiency as Justice.  This returns to the earlier Civ II concept of the mechanic, where you eliminate Corruption and Waste by building a Courthouse.  Dictatorships are unjust.  And wars get people killed.

E: Thought of another combination
++Growth, +Ind, -Morale, -Police, -Planet - While there's already Deidre for the 'eco hippies', there's nobody representing the non-ecowarrior pacifist type.

Um, never heard of it?  What's that?  Sit around making big peaceful factories?  Doesn't make any sense.

So I'd propose a somewhat decentralised, terraforming focused faction but who aren't friendly to planet, while also being pacifistic. The hobbits of Alpha Centauri, I suppose.

Um, hobbits are as eco-friendly as they come.   They don't terraform.  Sam loves Elves.  Merry and Pippin get along well with Ents.  "Sharky" industrializes the Shire in the alternate future.

[The_Reckoning]

That's true, hobbits are too eco-friendly! Scrap that idea, the 'peaceful farmers' theme isn't strong enough. Still trying to think how to theme a faction around high growth but without overlapping  , and then tying it together with a good theme which contrasts with the rest of the expansion factions. I suppose also we'd want a 'planet-harming' faction. In the original 7 it's Morgan and in the expansion 7 it's  , who's replaced by these suggestions.

New suggestion:
Keeping the same combination, ++Growth, +Ind, -Morale, -Police, -Planet - A 'humanity first' faction, as others have suggested. Explicitly trying to turn planet into Earth 2.0. Give some bonuses related to terraforming, can't take 'Green'. Don't like war because it means killing other humans, and that's the opposite of what they're trying to do. Commonality with in being fruitful and multiplying but contrasts in valuing human dignity. Directly opposed to . Contrasts heavily with , with the growth gap and mechanical war affinity/aversion.

[bvanevery]

Yang isn't extremely high growth.  He only has a +1 GROWTH bonus, so I wouldn't worry about that aspect of him.  In my own mod I took that away and gave it to the Believers.  "Theocratic", my replacement for Fundamentalist, became my high growth mechanic.  Democratic and Socialist (my Planned) don't give any growth.

Much to my chagrin, my Green doesn't give a growth penalty.  This was necessary to get the stock AI to actually use Green at an appropriate time, particularly with the Gaians.  There's what amounts to a bug in the original game, where Deirdre will not go Green until she's learned how to make Locusts!  That's a long damn time for the poster child of Green, to not go green.

My broader point is if you're going to mod, you're not beholden to precise interpretations of original factions.  You can shift factors around that weren't core to their personas.

For instance, I took away Yang's INDUSTRY bonus as well.  I don't really see a lore justification for it, and INDUSTRY is overpowered.  Only Domai gets that bonus.  You can't get it from my SE table.  I also don't have any INDUSTRY penalties, because I think futzing that back and forth just to build your Secret Projects optimally, is a PITA.  I'm much, much happier with a game where the costs are all the same.  Even with Domai, he's not switching costs to pay for stuff, he's only got 1 cost regime.

Explicitly trying to turn planet into Earth 2.0.

I was going to say that most factions are trying to recreate Earth, just their ideological vision of Earth.  But it may be more correct to say they're trying to impose a sweeping agenda.  A winner-take-all version of Earth.  Like where the God fearing types run everything and aren't constrained by democracy and multiculturalism, for instance.

The problem with being destructive of Planet's ecosystem, and constructive with an Earth's replacement, is it's hard to see how anyone's gonna maintain ideological purity about whether destruction or construction is the tool to be used.  Seems to me if they framed their discourse in those terms, they'd inevitably become a Morganite bulldozer crowd.

Analogously, it's like shooting your way to freedom.  What's one peasant village in the way of the greater good?  You actually already had that mentality with Lenin, if you go read the Soviet Archive entries that became available after the fall of the USSR.  Stalin is a logical conclusion of that mentality.

I think a more coherent agenda, that could actually work and be maintained over the long haul, is the doctrine of destroying Planet threats.  Mindworms obviously have to all be destroyed.  Their support structure, the fungus, probably has to be destroyed or rendered "sterile" somehow.  In any event, made harmless.  And once this faction discovers Planet is sentient, clearly that sentience has to be destroyed.  I've wondered how many Thermal Boreholes it would take to cook Planet's brain?  Like if you drop enough bombs down them.

[The_Reckoning]

Haha - that would be a cool feature in a remake/sequel. Send enough planet busters down boreholes and Planet's knocked consciousness, blocking any ascent victories for some time until it regrows after 50 years.

[bvanevery]

Maybe some really bad drugs to make it attack other factions.  Like Deirdre.

 

[Geo]

Haha - that would be a cool feature in a remake/sequel. Send enough planet busters down boreholes and Planet's knocked consciousness, blocking any ascent victories for some time until it regrows after 50 years.

I thought, lorewise, that the Planetmind resides in the fungal network. At least that's implied in the XenoEmpathyDome movie.

[bvanevery]

Yeah but... if that's all there is to Planet, then wiping out every scrap of fungus on Planet should kill the Planet mind.  Which would be a huge plot hole, as to why everyone was so worried about it achieving a full awakening, to the point of needing to transcend with it.  Get some goddamn Roundup!!!

Hence why I think killing Planet's brain would need to be a bit more of an operation than that.  I mean, even detonating a lot of Planet Busters doesn't kill the Planet mind, it just irritates it.

Fungal roots go deep?

Perhaps remove Tectonic Missiles from the game.  Require a Thermal Borehole to be dug, at great expense (like in my mod).  Then hit it with a Planet Buster.  Instead of a crater, you get an upwelling of land.  And the fungus on that land, withers and dies shortly thereafter.

Poses a bit of a problem at sea.