Faction Pack Testing Post-Mortem

[Sigma]

I'll consider it a beta, not the finished product, since I'm sure that I'll need to tweak the stats for most of the factions before it's done 100%.

[Buster's Uncle]

You can edit and replace when you consider yourself done, then - probably ought to explicitly label this a beta release up front in the meanwhile...

[ete]

Linking to the wiki pages for full stats (and images once sisko fixed the upload folder permissions) perhaps?

[Buster's Uncle]

Mmmaybe, but he's already got the pics in an album, and I'm only talking about a sales presentation so more people will download his stuff.  More people is good for him and good for everyone...

Links to the relevant wiki pages in addition are a very good idea, but some of it needs to be right there on the description page for maximum presentational value.  This is an area I fancy I'm very good at, having sold, for instance, this forum to so many.  There was almost nothing to see here (and sell) at the beginning of 2012...

[ete]

Having a few pics too (definitely links to them) is a good idea, but maybe a brief overview of each+link to details is going to be a better sell than a wall of detailed info?

[Buster's Uncle]

I didn't say a wall.  A stats list takes little space compared to the pics, even if they're all cropped to leaderhead, base, logo and DL and posted together in a row instead of a big shot of the whole .pcx (the former being preferable if you want to do the extra work.)

I've messed with posting a few custom factions to Downloads in my time, if not near so many here as I should have.

So yes, definitely brief as feasible, but tell 'em what they're getting.  Show enough that they'll want to read at the Wiki link.

[Sigma]

I've uploaded a beta of the faction pack here.

[Sigma]

House Satori's territory and social choices. No big surprises here, except that I expected their income to be higher. They did have about 1200 energy stored away when I stopped the test, so their Interest rate probably has something to do with that.

[Sigma]

Satori snagged some secret projects from me. I wasn't too broken up about the Merchant Exchange, but losing the Hunter Seeker Algorithm hurt. They built that before I even researched its pre-requisite tech. So now they have cheap probes AND probe immunity. Grrr!

[Sigma]

Poor Marshall Basque. The Genarchs took her HQ early in the game, and she got restarted on this hopelessly small island. She had but that single base for almost the entire game, until she was finally able to construct a sea base a few turns before I ended the test.

[Sigma]

Apollo Industries fared a bit better than the Authority from their restart. If only they'd wound up on the landmass to the south with the uranium flats. They were more or less out of the game as a consequence, but they gave me an excuse to go to war again with Joaquin, so that worked out okay.

I find their social engineering choices highly questionable though.

[Sigma]

Leviathan Body territory. Strangely enough, although they are set to aggressive and I was running their political aversion, they seemed alright with having a treaty. Quite a lot of territory, though I would expect their bases to be bigger with their growth rate.

[Sigma]

Aaaand of course they picked Free Market even though they get double penalties from it. Nice job guys!

[ete]

-12 Police, ouch. Still, it may be worth it for them once the Planned effic penalty gets too annoying, Police does not get worse after a certain point.

[Sigma]

Yeah, the thing about Penalty: Free Market is that Free Market already hits you with the maximum penalties for its respective social benefits, so doubling that just makes those negatives impossible to mitigate, rather than actually making them worse. Plus for the Leviathan in particular it's a little bit toothless, as they already have negative police and no way of getting police except for Thought Control and the Ascetic Virtues, since they are averse to Police State politics.

In addition, the massive planet penalty is also kind of pointless because -3 is already the maximum, and since the only way to get positive planet until Cybernetic is with Green economics it's basically an either/or proposition.