ete plays around with network node factions

[ete]

Somewhere for me to dump bits and pieces of my experiences with various factions. Currently using the WPC version of network node factions since the download here won't unzip for me (tried 7z and jZip).

First game is with the Freelancers:
-1 MORALE: {Mercenaries fighting other peoples wars}
-2 PLANET: {No respect for the environment}
-3 ECONOMY: {Contract earnings}
+2 SUPPORT: {Excellent supply lines}
FREE FACILITIES: {Research Hospital (for casualties) at each base.}
{Headquarters at each base}
60% HURRY COSTS: {Factories geared up for wartime production.}
{May Not use Eudaimonic future society (military regime)}

Mainly attracted by wanting to know how HQ at every base works. Turned out that my version had +3 rather than -3 economy, no inefficiency ever due to all the HQs, and to top it off I started in the jungle on an island which seems to have no competitors other than worms. 2130 and I'm teching impossibly fast, rush building colony pods, and generally playing a totally broken faction.

[Buster's Uncle]

generally playing a totally broken faction.

You're gonna get that a lot, I think.

[ete]

yea, seems like it. That game I dominated faster than any other, only the large oceans and me playing for the endgame allowed it to last as long as it did. Total immunity from inefficiency due to HQs everywhere basically removes the penalty for having massive numbers of bases combined with an already absurd +3 econ and 60% hurry cost is.. just really really broken. And the penalties are insignificant (worms are slightly annoying, and a marginally weaker army). I wonder if it's possible to balance out the HQ at every base thing, since that seems like the most unique element of the faction. Even dropping econ right down to -3 (-2 energy per base) like the datalinks suggests it is seems unlikely to entirely manage that beyond the earlygame.. though I could be wrong. Either way, that seems unintuitive flavorwise.

[Yitzi]

Well, with +3 economy of course it'll be broken.
If you change it to -3, then you get an interesting faction...the HQ and hurry cost reduction, plus the heavy PLANET penalty, suggest an energy-focused faction, but with -3 economy the base square is producing no energy even with the HQ (or 1 with recycling tanks, back to normal for a non-HQ base if you run FM), so you probably want fairly large bases.  You'll probably want to run Planned/Police State for wartime or Planned/Democracy when you want to grow fast.  Obviously you'll want to emphasize energy in your terraforming/crawling, and have a fairly high cash slider.  You've got support to spare when running Police State, and cheap units are cheaper to hurry than expensive ones, so you'll probably focus on large numbers of 20- or at most 30-mineral units.  Which is probably a good idea anyway for dealing with what would otherwise be this faction's main weakness, namely a worm-based aggressive enemy.  Of course, that makes spore launchers quite a pain...

I think the faction's real weakness is that its attributes all work against each other.  The support bonus and immunity to the main effect of inefficiency suggest a militaristic approach, but a morale penalty suggests the opposite.  The prevalent HQs, free research hospital, and hurry bonus suggest an energy-based approach, but -3 ECONOMY means that it's impossible to get +1 energy/base, much less +1/square.  That said, a hurry bonus plus high support screams to me "rush lots of cheap units, and hope your enemy isn't using that much artillery".

[Kilkakon]

generally playing a totally broken faction.

You're gonna get that a lot, I think.

This.

What I did with some of the network node factions I liked was all balance them to be around the same power level. It was a level stronger than most original factions, but meant that most games were sort of fair. Some NN stuff is just ridiculous.

[ete]

Second game was quite unusual, played as random with a load of customs available and got the Antimind:
+4 PLANET: {Able to tap into Planetmind's neural net to capture mindworms}
-3 INDUSTRY: {AntiMind experiences pain when pollution enters its "body"}
-2 GROWTH: {Human slaves are restricted from reproducing to maintain worm majority}
Free Ability: {Hypnotic Trance: Can turn psi powers aganst user}
+2 Nutrients and Energy in fungus squares
Immune to PLANET penalties
Receves free Mindworm unit at start
{May not use Free Market economics.}

The start was quite risky, I ran into another progenitor faction before I'd captured my first worm. Luckily my Battle Ogre beat theirs (ran up a river and attacked with a 1/3 penalty). Wiped them out, and another custom progenitor faction fell shortly afterwards due to mass mindworms and huge psi bonus (unlisted, but they have a 50% Psi bonus to go with the 40% bonus from +4 planet. This means larval mass worms have a good shot against Demon Boil Fungal Towers.). My actual bases were kind of pathetic due to the heavy industry/growth penalty (though Planned/Wealth mitigated it a bit), they contributed basically nothing to the war effort until the very end of the game. Anyway, no more nearby enemies, so I spent most of the game pop popping and killing/capturing native life on the large continent which had all but one player, which was kinda fun. Turns out an economy based almost entirely on mind worm killing is pretty great with the faction's psi bonuses, and I eventually rush built a few good projects. The +3nut/+2energy fungus also helped bases grow, though they were always somewhat mineral starved. I accepted bribes of 250+ credits from PK and Spartans for a treaty fairly early on, after initially planning an all out war on everyone.

Eventually I came into contact with the Usurpers who had a small but solid few cities and were a little mindworm resistant due to res armor on everything. But they were on res-6 weapons/res-3 armor, and somehow I had picked up two mk2 Battle Ogres from the pods.. so once they got there the battle was laughably one sided. The Spartans fell immediately to worms, and PKs next. Killed everyone in keeping with the faction's goal.


Last to die was some custom faction, the terran league navy, which seems impressively balanced (possibly underpowered with -3 Morale, extra drone for each 5 pop, and growth penalty) other than starting with impact weapons. I'd spent a while building up an airforce of chaos gas needlejets (originally missile/fission, but upgrading is so easy when you have infinite wormcash), and gassed their entire population into oblivion in a few turns.


Overall, really broken faction with high native. Not sure if it would work on low/mid, but +4 Planet and +50% Psi is just too much at the start, even with the major penalties (especially since you don't need green and the growth drop from that to keep +4). You don't need bases once the wormcatching cascade begins. May be possible to vaguely balance while maintaining the super-native feel with some combination of Morale/non-psi combat penalties, losing some of the Psi bonus, Planet maybe to +3, and reducing the fungus bonus. I'd like to play against an AI using this faction though, that could be quite a challenge.

Edit: My bases:

[Yitzi]

Yeah, that's a serious worm rush faction.  It might face a bit of trouble against a human player (especially the Spartans) in the early and midgame, though, as the human player could just build cheap units (with or without trance/empath) and rely on the industry and growth advantage to win.
In the late game, it becomes totally overpowered if it can grab the Manifold Harmonics.

[ete]

Just got thoroughly owned by the AI playing antimind (Battle Ogre plus a few super boosted worms before I had lasers, weeee), using a faction which seemed to have no bonuses or disadvantages, despite being meant to have some. I watched the AIs for a long time. They has some major issues. The freelancers initially looked like they could take on the antimind, but then they decided to build almost purely native life. -2 planet, -1 morale against +4 planet +50% Psi (and another native faction with +3 planet who was allied with antimind). Still they had such a huge production advantage that they lasted for a while, until the other factions raised the sea and sunk their bit of land, so no more nice terraforming. And my old faction (i'd got a sea colony pod out, and made a few bases before giving it to AI) made... so many IODs and Sealurks. SO many. Despite being in a terrible place to use them and having plenty of time to build. Bree were happily building on the other unconnected sea, eventually took the powergraph lead. Then Bree and Antimind started singularity nuking eachother. Those things are crazy.

Given how long my old faction was left alone.. I'd probably have been able to make it a major player, maybe even win (was pacted with the freelancers). Maybe I'll go back to that save and see if I can as a challenge someday.

[Kilkakon]

I love the AntiMind faction. :O As a kid they were one of the ones I'd have in every game and yes they tended to dominate very hard haha

[Green1]

The Anti-mind seems really cool as well.

In fact, the Antimind may make the cut. I am leaning towards including them in spot #3 for my next detailed AAR. Ouch... this is going to hurt. I may need to summon the powers of earthmicheal just to survive.

At least it is not the Supanoobs and The Scotsnoobs. Now that would be a cage match. But.. I would not want the play against them.. just watch.

[Kilkakon]

Yeah they need a bit of nerfing. Probably some morale penalties or something. In some ways my Betrayed faction is a more sane version of AntiMind, having a large PSI bonus, no PLANET, and not being allowed to pick up Green.

[Green1]

I was too tempted and set up a tiny planet/abundant life to practice Miriam at least vs Stephanie and Oblivion with some other factions mixed in.

Yang owned pretty Oblivion pretty hard and made Steph a minor faction towards when I finally said enough of the foolishness.

Been having trouble DLing the NN factions. I think I am suffering the same problems as T_ras was a while back. See, I tether from a smartphone. Lately, on some larger DLs I have been getting currupted files and the DL being stopped before I can even finish. Who knows, i think the cell carriers have gotten a new weapo to use against us guys. Going to try again at a coffee house or may wait till I step off the train and go to my relative's house.

[Buster's Uncle]

Maybe I should divide the collection in two and post it as two .zips...

[Green1]

Maybe I should divide the collection in two and post it as two .zips...

Yeah.. The smaller ones, I do not seem to have a problem. But, both Foxfi (android wifi app) and STVP seem to be cutting out on those large downloads. Does not seem to affect streaming files like podcasts or youtube nor does it affect websites.

The Android tether modders will patch it eventually. But I have a feeling it will be a paid deal because one of the solutions is going through a proxy to get past the carriers.

[Buster's Uncle]

The problem could even be on our end - I had to temporarily change the size limit to upload it at all, and sisko then told me that shouldn't have worked. 

I'll look into the split upload tomorrow.