Some help with a faction set

[ete]

Okay, played a game with all these factions at Thinker (so. much. easier. drones.) as Satori.

The Pilgrims rolled over first the Technocrats, then Apollos and Geneachs, then the Authority before I ran into them (all were restarted except the Authority) before I had much contact with them. I had pretty nice land (loads of Nut bonuses and rivers), and have been testing out the whole mass forest former heavy opening EM talks about, focusing massively on builder techs. The Body was my only contact for ages, I border pushed them to a chokepoint and gave in to their threats of 50-20 ECs or a tech to keep them from attacking me and forcing me to get some military tech (I was high on the leaderboard, but had nothing but scout patrols and a few unity rovers for a very long time so they wanted to fight).

Lack of Planned held me up a bit, and the opening was a little slow due to support issues and morale.. but once I got trading, wow. These guys are amazing. I'm running Demo/Green/Wealth and 20% Psych which gives GAs everywhere for +2 Econ. Managed to get almost all the worthwhile SPs (Pilgrims got the command nexus, but it was a size two coastal base so I mind controlled it). I also freed the Authority and have pacted with everyone bar the Pilgrims. Actually, I've never been at war with anyone else this game.. and my bases are getting crazy stuff like +17 energy from commerce per pact, which is like 85 energy per base in the big ones.

The Morale/elite issue is because you're using morale modifier rather than a SE setting, swap that around and it should work properly.

[Sigma]

Sounds like you had fun! So is it your opinion that I need to tone down their trading abilities?

[Nexii]

Nice themes (art/flavor text) in this!  I would say the Genome looks much., much, more powerful than the others.  +Talent/4, recycle tanks, and +2 morale are all huge bonuses.  -2 growth isn't much of an offset.  I think playing as them would be a cakewalk

Edit: Leviathan is also really weak and needs a boost.  -2 POLICE without any offsets to control drones is very crippling on Transcend.  Having to make Rec Commons at every base before it hits size 2 is just too slow.

[Sigma]

The Leviathan's police penalty is serious on transcend, but at lower difficulties it's not nearly as big of a deal, whereas their growth and Hab Complex bonus is. If I just wrote these factions for Transcend then they wouldn't be as balanced below that, seeing as Transcend is sort of its own monster compared to Thinker.

[ete]

Sounds like you had fun! So is it your opinion that I need to tone down their trading abilities?

ehh... for human V human play, you often have a lot less trading ability, and they do miss out on Planned/would have a very hard time if they started next to an aggressive faction.. In the hands of humans they're probably pretty top-notch against AI if you play it right, but then again AI generally are not too much of a problem.. I'd need more testing to be sure if they're too strong. I like the playstyle though, especially how strongly it encourages peace. In an entire game to Transcendence I had only one actual war (vs Pilgrims), plus a quick battle taking over the Apollo HQ by dropping some captured MWs off next to it forcing them to surrender for more sweet commerce. At all other times I was pacted or treatied with everyone.

[Yitzi]

Sounds like you had fun! So is it your opinion that I need to tone down their trading abilities?

ehh... for human V human play, you often have a lot less trading ability

Not necessarily.  After all, if they're good enough at trading (and the Satori are), they could probably simply pay someone to be their trading partners (plus maybe for military protection if said someone is a more military faction) and still come out ahead.

This assumes, of course, a decent number of players.  In 1v1 it's essentially a zero-sum game, which makes win/win deals (which is what the Satori and Morganites are built around) not really work.

[Nexii]

The Leviathan's police penalty is serious on transcend, but at lower difficulties it's not nearly as big of a deal, whereas their growth and Hab Complex bonus is. If I just wrote these factions for Transcend then they wouldn't be as balanced below that, seeing as Transcend is sort of its own monster compared to Thinker.

You could give them NODRONE, 1 or something, that can work for starting POLICE SE at or below -2

[Yitzi]

The Leviathan's police penalty is serious on transcend, but at lower difficulties it's not nearly as big of a deal, whereas their growth and Hab Complex bonus is. If I just wrote these factions for Transcend then they wouldn't be as balanced below that, seeing as Transcend is sort of its own monster compared to Thinker.

You could give them NODRONE, 1 or something, that can work for starting POLICE SE at or below -2

Or just accept that they'll need a rec commons to grow much (good thing they start with the prerequisite), but once they have one they grow fairly easily.

[ete]

I'm wanting to make an alternate set of these factions aquatisized, looking at possible balance changes. Will post more as I have it.

[Mart]

Hi,

I downloaded the faction set from the first post. I have a question about Authority bonus settings:
TECH, Mobile, SOCIAL, +SUPPORT, SOCIAL, +POLICE, SOCIAL, -RESEARCH, FREEABIL, 21, DEFENSE, 115, 4, HURRY, 125, SOCIAL, -PLANET,

Is this intentional to have 4 in this declaration?:
DEFENSE, 115, 4,

or this is just a typo? Something left from writing other settings?

[Yitzi]

Looks like a typo.

[Mart]

Looks like a typo.

Most likely, parser, as far as I know, takes only one argument there. But SMACX can surprise after so many years.

[JarlWolf]

Bumping up for all comrades to see.

[Sigma]

Diessa brought up some excellent points in the Default Factions thread concerning mechanical imbalance and tonal inconsistencies in this set, so I'm bringing this back from the dead to discuss these changes.

As I posted in that thread, the point where I am in my life right now leaves me no time for lengthly projects like this set anymore, so I'm considering it open source and anyone can download and make changes to it. I'm still interested in there being a definitive set, so that's what I'd like to produce from this conversation.

[ete]

If it's left entirely open I can imagine three or four people coming up with their own sets of incompatible forks and/or never getting decisions on changes, which is very messy. Two ways to avoid this I see: You remain around enough to pick which is the official set, or you appoint someone to review proposed changes and integrate them into an official version (with ability to veto changes/take over again if you wish). If you want to go for the second I'd be happy to act as steward for the faction set until you return, and would generally focus on improving balance and integrating suggestions (wiki versions of text files for version control, weeee). The main disadvantage is that I'm not able to playtest from this computer, so would be relying on others for firsthand experience (though I have played a few games with the most recent versions already+used more custom factions than probably anyone else on AC2 during testing for the ultimate faction pack so have a good feel for likely impact of bonuses/penalties).