Community custom faction balancing

[ete]

Since we'll (hopefully) have a wiki before too long which will be used to organize as many custom factions as we can get our hands on, I figured it'd be an interesting project to play with and check/improve the balance of new factions. First off we should lay down the aims of the project and I'd like to pick a co leader to ensure the ball keeps rolling while I'm unable to be online (which is most weekends).

General principles (feel free to suggest more/reword/pick holes in):

• Each faction should have a distinct feel, both in gameplay and philosophy. Factions which appear to have the greatest potential for interesting distinctiveness will be balanced first.
• We should aim to make factions no more powerful than the strongest non-alien official faction or weaker than the weakest official faction in the hands of a competent human player. Custom alien factions may be on a par with existing aliens.
• Factions which are intended to be stronger or weaker (e.g. to give the AI a chance, to balance out a match with a large skill difference, to make a scenario) will have two versions, one standard (stronger or weaker) and one balanced with respect to other factions.
• Both single and multiplayer balance should be considered.
• Unless a faction is specifically designed for a modded game it should be balanced just for vanilla scient patched SMAX, with some attention payed to vanilla (or AI patched) SMAC.
• Making a faction that's used effectively by AI is good, but not absolutely essential.

If you're interested in co-leading this (putting up threads while I'm not around, helping make judgment calls based on posts in the thread, writing up descriptions when a faction is finished, putting up downloads) then please post here. Ideally I'd like someone active who knows the game well and is able to step back from an argument and not get too heated in debates. Liking wikis and being able to write decently are also big pluses.

Also, if you'd like to suggest which faction we should work on first, post away! I'll put up a poll with the most popular suggestions when the wiki comes online, or sooner if that takes a while. Comments/questions about the project are also good.

[Kilkakon]

I'm happy to make fly-by comments if I notice anything. After all, my networks are running at full capacity as I approach completion of Lost Eden, so I can't really commit to joining a posse of faction balancing chums. Plus I'm only somewhat okay at it in the first place, having very little proven experience in the field.

[Rainbow Lizard]

Can you tell me what the best to worst stats are for factions?

[ete]

Network Node/other custom ones or official? And, to both, when there's a wiki you'll easily be able to check.

[Yitzi]

I'd suggest that alien factions should be balanced against other alien factions rather than human factions.

A ranking of how powerful the official factions are (and why) might help with judging and manipulating.

Also, while I'm not much for heavy balance-testing, I could probably help come up with ideas on what a given faction's optimal playstyle might be, or how to balance an overpowered or underpowered faction while keeping the theme.

[ete]

I'd suggest that alien factions should be balanced against other alien factions rather than human factions.

This: "Custom alien factions may be on a par with existing aliens." should be changed to "Custom alien factions should be balanced with respect to existing official alien."

A ranking of how powerful the official factions are (and why) might help with judging and manipulating.

Seems to me that this'd likely be source of a lot of only vaguely related debate, and one I'm not best equipped to look after (I can comfortably beat transcend without bugs/crawlers/AI abuse (though it can get a little dicey in the earlygame), but I've never played multiplayer). If someone wants to start a thread for tiering he official factions that would be cool. I'd suggest doing two tier lists, one for how good the AI is with a faction, one for how good it is in human hands.

Also, while I'm not much for heavy balance-testing, I could probably help come up with ideas on what a given faction's optimal playstyle might be, or how to balance an overpowered or underpowered faction while keeping the theme.

That'll be appreciated. And balance testing can be fairly light, just include it as an AI in whatever game you happen to start and see how it copes. Or playing as it with various tweaks to see how it works.