Community custom faction balancing - Poll

[Sigma]

All of the factions that I've been designing in my main set are meant to be roughly balanced against the original 14. Whether they actually are is really up to testing.

[ete]

@JarlWolf: The originals will still exist, and I'm pretty sure it's possible to balance them while retaining almost all of the original core playstyle.

@Sigma: Just having a fresh look at your factions, giving my thoughts:

Leviathan Body: Looks reasonable to me, main penalty is having a really hard time running market, and no police. But boosted offense and immunity to MC are very good long lasting combat advantages, so it's probably okay.

Sons of Advent: Still quite Cha-y, a bit weaker with initial wormrush, but more stable thanks to fungmins. Fanatic and being able to run Fundy is cool, reasonably strong rusher, poor builder. Maybe a little on the weak side. Dropping -1 Econ is possible, they still don't get +1 eng/square without a GA, it would have only a minor effect on energy production otherwise but let them Wealth/GA for +1 eng/square if they wanted.

House Satori: Possibly either great or terrible, mostly depending on whether they get good trading partners or warlike neighbors. Will have to test exactly how big a deal the interest is. Can't fight a conventional war for a long time, liable to getting rushed, but no economic disadvantages other than having to pay for former support.

Genome Syndicate: Slowish start due to growth, but partly counteracted by free rec tanks. Morale and Bio are handy. Probably balanced due to slowish start, though making bio labs only available with their preq tech is an option if their bases are too well equipped at the start, which is possble.

Colonial Authority: Hurry cost is going to be annoying. Boosted def and a larger army due to support.. probably fairly balanced, not a great builder but has enough with cheap former support and easy drone control to mostly offset research and hurry issues. Could rush reasonably with early rovers and support.

Apollo Industries: hmm.. Maybe a bit too strong a builder here. Two very good buildy bonuses (+1 Indust and 85% Hurry) which work excellently together (if you're rush buying after the first line, for each unit or facility a standard faction makes these guys make roughly 1.3, which is a Big Deal) plus a couple of helpful ones (good starting tech, free crawler for fast start), with mostly just drone issues to offset it. I'm not a fan of using primarily drone problems to balance a faction because as a human.. you can get around them. It's annoying and a bit of micromanagement, not a major weakness. Effic is also there, but small enough penalty to not make a big dent most likely? Should probably test it before making any changes, but possibly make Effic -2? That makes it very hard for them to run Planned at least.. but would maybe cripple them later on with Green disallowed. Or add another penalty?

Technocrat Foundation: I really like this faction. Variety of strategy given by the Robust Effic so you can run PS/Planned for war, but you'd lose out on the effic bonus. It's probably quite similar power to the Uni, Drone and Probe problems against Morale and smaller bases, but has its own twist. Probably close to the best official factions, but I think probably not quite overpowered.


In summary: I'd put Apollo and Genome under the microscope for testing, try out Satori in a few situations (lots of trading partners, few trading partners, isolated, early war), and like to see how the Technos deal with war (is their Morale bonus enough to stop them rushing well under PS/Planned). And maybe give the Sons of Advent a minor buff.

I think I'd be happy with having most of them played against me in MP.

[Sigma]

Thanks for the breakdown ete! I agree that the Technocrats are probably the best conceived (they were the first ones I thought up) and Satori being a potential powder keg. Tweaking Apollo is a definite option, as I'm sure I underestimated how powerful their bonuses are. How often do AIs Hurry production anyway?

For the Sons of the Advent, maybe keeping -Econ but dropping -Industry? That way they're more capable of building more physical units to supplement their worm forces?

Once I have the graphics done I'm going to start testing them in earnest, maybe using a few AARs to showcase them.

[ete]

Dropping the - Industry would be a much bigger buff to the faction, - Econ is not a huge deal most of the time (-1 Energy per turn from HQ, Wealth becomes a poor option, and midgame it stops GA/Wealth +1 eng/square), - Industry makes everything they build 10% more expensive. Without the Indust drop maybe they'd be too good at rushing, and they'd actually be not terrible builders (still no +1 eng/square, but they've probably got too many combat advantages for that to be their only disadvantage).

Not sure how much AIs hurry, though they don't have much else to spend on. I think they switch production a lot.

[Sigma]

Hey, what if I replaced Satori's +2 Probe with a 75% Probecost instead? That way they are incentivized to use Probes rather than just protected from them.

[ete]

Makes them much more offensive probe users and drops their probe defense, which is maybe a bit more fitting?