If there were seven human factions in SMAX, what would the remaining two be?

[MysticWind]

Never mind the expansion would have to be renamed.

Consider also that the five existing factions are similar to the original ones, both in terms of concept, lore, and focuses:

Cult - Gaian planet + Believer fanaticism
Cyborg - University
Drones - Hive
Data Angels - Morganite split-off + University research + Peacekeeper democracy
Pirates - Spartans of the sea

So what combinations or variants of the original 7 are missing? What gameplay styles?

[bvanevery]

The Data Angels don't research anything.  They steal everything.  It has been commented that they shouldn't exist as a faction, they should be parasitic upon factions.  So their inclusion as a faction is a bit problematic.  One can hand wave it as "strongest probe team faction".  In my mod I have 3 probe team factions: the Hive, the Data Angels, and the Cyborgs.  The DA have the strongest probe teams but they all have the same 25% cost discount, of a baseline double cost regime.  I can't stand overpowered probe teams.  Made me rage quit the original game more times than I can count!

I always thought of the expansion factions as a later expanding of Planet's cultures.  You pointed out several of these transitions, although I think it's more difficult to read it that way in the order you presented.  So I list it as:

Gaians --> Cult of Planet
University --> Cybernetic Consciousness
Hive --> Free Drones

It actually makes no sense at all that they start as single colonies.  It's a game mechanical contrivance.  A real history, would have Planet more fully developed and occupied when the Aliens land.  Tech level would be higher too.  But... that's not the game.

So the question is roughly, IMO, what do the original factions become?  We have answers for 3 of them already.

I don't think the Pirates are a transition from another faction.  They were given the game mechanical role of the Spartans, but they are not Spartans.  They are an acknowledgement that a very large portion of Planet's surface, was initially ignored.  My own Pirates are money grubbers, not fighters.  I never thought swarms of pestering ships was good play mechanic.  It's rather boring to a human player.

I suppose you could argue:

Peacekeepers --> Data Angels

if you believed that trying to keep planetary unity was basically a disaster.  Any form of planetwide centralized government collapses, leaving only democratic anarchistic rebels to carry the sentiment into the future.  Everyone else has pretty much gone "proper totalitarian".

I guess in the original lore, the Spartans got wiped out by the Gaians.  In the SMACX timeframe, you'd expect the Spartans to have conquered all of Planet by now.  Since they didn't, they must be dead.

The "conquer everyone" play mechanic is clearly taken by Conqueror Marr.  I even had him pursuing Power for a long time, because I saw no basic reason he should be pursuing the same thing the Caretakers do.  However since they only wrote hardwired alien dialogue for Planned economy, recently I reneged and went back to both Alien factions being Planned.

With the Aliens out, someone needs to take the "conquer everyone else" play style.  I have trouble seeing this ideologically though.  Wouldn't most factions want "advanced tanks" at the time of SMACX ?

The Morganites, being the weaklings of the original lineup, are also not represented in SMACX.  Nobody's doing the money grubbing Economic Victory play style.

Game mechanically the Believers were a "crapload of units and spreading", without any research brains.  The Free Drones mostly took over that role, of "dumb spam".  Any PROBE shenanigans got pushed off to the Data Angels.  Since the Angels don't really have the money to buy anyone out, I don't really see the point.

The Peacekeepers aren't represented in SMACX either.  There's no Diplomatic Victory faction.

So in the expansion, we're really down to Transcend Victory and Conquest Victory.  And absent the Usurpers, we don't have any explicit champion of the latter approach.

Seems like competing megacorps would be logical in the SMACX future.  Morganites don't manage to retain control.  You'd have a duopoloy or more.  These corporate governments would probably be anti-democratic and close to totalitarian.  I tried to model this somewhat with my Cybernetic SE choice.

If we still have a Planetary Council with voting members, then it's weird to think the U.N. Peacekeepers didn't survive and aren't around.  Does it become more like a feudal barony system, dividing up the spoils of the world?  Until such a time as someone makes a power grab to rearrange everything.  Dune-esque.  Maybe the Council should be reskinned and different voting options would be available.  Like whether stapled drones are gonna get health care.  Or limits on how big a nuke can be used, before it's considered a problem.

Does Planet get more atheist, or more spooky with more religion?  If any part of the Believers survived with any relevance, then we'd have multiple religious sects.  I'm not counting the Cult, as they're clearly a Gaian offshoot.

Well, if we've really only got room for 1 religion and 1 corporation, ...could make that into some kind of Church Of The Almighty Dollar, although that's rather insincere.  It would continue the anti-Christian hit job themes of the original game though.  If religion is 1 of the corporations, then we have room for another one.

My name for them would be simple enough: The Evangelicals.  Morgan TV, eat your heart out!

Believers --> Evangelicals.

No they are not in it for their sincerity of belief in God.  They're in it for the money.

[bvanevery]

Believers --> Evangelicals.

No they are not in it for their sincerity of belief in God.  They're in it for the money.

But having given this a night's sleep, I don't actually like the name.  It's too "on the nose" and more about Earth than the future of Planet.  I do think I have the right idea that Christianity needs to turn into something a bit weirder in the future, that is not mindworm worship though.  Some kind of cult of human racial purity, in contrast to the kumbaya with Planet stuff?  And no cyborgs either.  Miriam hated all that.

The Spartans could give rise to some kind of nomadic land based faction.  A sort of scruffy survivalist horde?  The problem with that sort of thing, is much like the Data Angels, it shouldn't exist as a faction with the same techs and build mechanics.  In Dune, the Fremen certainly aren't organized like all the great Houses are.

[MysticWind]

if you believed that trying to keep planetary unity was basically a disaster.  Any form of planetwide centralized government collapses, leaving only democratic anarchistic rebels to carry the sentiment into the future.  Everyone else has pretty much gone "proper totalitarian".

Yeah, they both also respect the free flow of information, as does the University. Though funnily enough the Probe ratings means the Data Angels are very good at keeping their info secure while the University are not- ah, game mechanics. Also the Lal being knowledge-minded is a holdover from his pre-release characterization as "the Philosopher."

I guess in the original lore, the Spartans got wiped out by the Gaians.  In the SMACX timeframe, you'd expect the Spartans to have conquered all of Planet by now.  Since they didn't, they must be dead.

Oh right, guess the Spartans were never able to get the hang of mindworms and that's how Deidre did it.

Wouldn't most factions want "advanced tanks" at the time of SMACX ?

Advanced tanks?

Seems like competing megacorps would be logical in the SMACX future.  Morganites don't manage to retain control.  You'd have a duopoloy or more.  These corporate governments would probably be anti-democratic and close to totalitarian.  I tried to model this somewhat with my Cybernetic SE choice.

Yeah I like how the SMAC Fac Pack has a corporate monopoly faction that is anti-Free Market. Because any other than Planned would threaten its actual existence.

Maybe the Council should be reskinned and different voting options would be available.  Like whether stapled drones are gonna get health care.  Or limits on how big a nuke can be used, before it's considered a problem.

It's definitely problematic that the council gets reduced to five instead of seven, and the majority of the SMAX human factions feel like they just want to be left alone. The Cult would want to run everything, and maybe you can characterize the Consciousness as the Borg but that's not how Aki Zeta-5's really presented in the lore. The Drones want to overthrow everyone rather than actually rule them. So it does make Diplo victory feel more remote or hollow.

Some kind of cult of human racial purity, in contrast to the kumbaya with Planet stuff?  And no cyborgs either.  Miriam hated all that.

Yeah, I think "realistically" there'd be far more religions on Planet than just the two. But they could easily exist within the other factions. Prosperity Gospel believers with the Morganites, dharmic pantheists and Wiccan pagans with the Gaians, Taoists and meditative faiths with Yang, basically any religious adherent can find a home with the Peacekeepers. But thinking of another religion-based faction is hard without drawing too much from the present day, because it gets too easily dated and feels limiting.

Human purity works, I've seen it in fan works. I had one in mind as well, though it's more of an openly antagonistic anti-Planet one.

The Spartans could give rise to some kind of nomadic land based faction.  A sort of scruffy survivalist horde?  The problem with that sort of thing, is much like the Data Angels, it shouldn't exist as a faction with the same techs and build mechanics.  In Dune, the Fremen certainly aren't organized like all the great Houses are.

Hah, I have a conceptual faction set I'm working on that has a faction just like that, basically Pirates of the land. Though that's more of a lore-focused project and probably wouldn't play that great if actually modded. I'll make a thread on it someday.

[bvanevery]

Advanced tanks?

Even the freakin' Gaians smashed up the Spartans with quantum tanks, so I don't see why any faction would turn its nose up at military tech on principle.  I would expect the future to be an arms race, and not the province of some "conquering" faction.

Human purity works, I've seen it in fan works. I had one in mind as well, though it's more of an openly antagonistic anti-Planet one.

I forgot about the explicitly anti-Planet angle.  I've thought that killing Planet should be an endgame pursuit, especially for a faction like the University, as Zhakarov sure as hell hated mindworms.  Why does anyone have to Transcend?  Why not drill some boreholes and drop enough Planet Busters down them to obliterate the planet mind?  I don't personally see the Transcend victory as being in any way good, as it's pretty much the death of humanity as an individualist oriented species.  I think that sucks!  I won't win a game by Transcend on principle, except perhaps if I was roleplaying the Cultists.  Meaning basically, lemmings off the cliff until the bitter end.

[Protok St]

Let's make a supposition based on origin of the existed factions.

1. 8 of the leaders are Senior Officers of the Unity Ship. Their subordinates followed them.
 

So that way, if explain convincingly a new Senior Officer of the Unity and his subordinate crew then new faction could arrive.
Mining Officer
Repair and Maintenance Officer
Communications Officer
Cultural Experience Database Storage Officer
First Contact Officer


2. Split the existed faction. When a second strong leader appears inside with new direction of ambitions.
  -->  Aki comes from University with a new agenda: Cyborgs is a separate species, not servants and need own place in a world.

  -->  Roze comes from M. Industries with understanding that information should serve not monopoly but society.

So that way, if explain convincingly a reason of opposite idea inside strong existing one society, and why it could be splitted.
  --> Main Idea is Ecology. Gaians way is to assimilate with new conditions, accept them. The opposite way could be to restore especially Earth-like Ecology with relative animals/plants because it's best for humanity as a specie.
  --> Main Idea is Religion. Believers way is an Abrahamic style religion. The opposite way could be the deification of an ancient race whose monoliths are found on the planet: old religion was wrong, god is a different, to believe is a different.
  --> Declared Idea is a Peace way to achieve any goals. The opposite way could be a Declared Idea of achieve any goals by Fire and Sword aka Laser and HoverTank. The split may be caused because of difference between shadowed war of Peacekeepers and Clearly declared Agressive war ambitions.


3. Uniting a pieces from other factions by an overall objective. Conditions of social-economic relations are the most powerful force in society.
[...] -->  Free Drones raise the issue of equality and justice, the inadmissibility of exploiting the lives of the working class for the prosperity of the bourgeois class. In all over the human history this questions is appears, and will appears because of fundamental processes of social-economic relations. In conditions of Alpha Centauri story the objective to construct socially just society is strong enough to gather people from all other factions into separate one.

So that way, if explain convincingly an Idea and why people should unite around new major goal.
[...] --> The idea of all known factions is to build a new home on that planet. The main opposite Idea could be that "we were wrong; this place is not good for us, it's bad; we need to search further on a new ship". Direction of human with this idea is not to construct for care here, but construct for leaving this dark unfriendly place to search another one. In such unwelcoming conditions as Planet gives, this "exodus" Idea could be strong enough to collect people from other factions.


4. Transformation under influence of outer uncontrolled factors. This can transform a part of society with new characteristics so it's no longer as others.
  --> The Planet Cult society has a two outer factors which made them different. The genes mutation made them level more receptive to the PSY interactions between each other, Planet, planet species. Close communication and subsequent influence of Kri'lan "The Betrayer".

So that way, if explain convincingly a transformation conditions which can provoke a new ideology and style.
[...] --> Till that time a Human - who is try to control Planet. Now, Planet will try to take control under human consciousness. A new faction is appeared when one of the colonies become a Formicary with humans driven by a Planet Mind.

[...] --> The sudden appearance of a faction from the future. Entire colony base appears because of any kind of malfunction in a future experiments of time-traveling.

[...] --> Another mutation appears because of long time space radiation while flying on Unity. Now people could not feel normal in a planetary gravity conditions. Only underwater pressure make them feel OK.


Faction leader Unity crew ranks in canon

[bvanevery]

I think the transitions  -->  and  -->  are readily inferred from the game's lore.

I think origin from the Morganites is just a convenience of backstory.  The Data Angels don't really belong to any faction in particular, and shouldn't be a faction per se.  We can reasonably assume that hacktivists would exist in most of the factions.

  <-->  is a known opposition, in the anti-Federalist, Sovereign State, anti New World Order, right wing militia sense.  A modern manifestation is belief in QAnon, but this stuff was going on in the 1990s too.  The original game doesn't do that much to play up U.N. vs. militia hostility, so it can be missed.  Also, the  <-->  opposition is given lots of development, so overshadows it.

[MysticWind]

The Cult of Planet technically branched off from the "Ecological Malcontents", which is an example of Alien Crossfire's cursory, throwaway approach towards world-building. But easy enough to imagine they were Gaian extremists, though perhaps they could've split from any faction. I also like the idea that there were sub-factional organizations that were running around and causing mischief, which admittedly explains the rise of the SMAX factions easily enough.

The Data Angels are pretty weak as a faction concept- there's probably better ways to imagine a Probe faction- though I think the Morganite thing might be thought of as '90s hackers vs. Microsoft. The incomparable "Joe" by Alinestra Covelia does a good job in doing the writers' work by creating a lot of material and characterization that fleshes them out.

The Spartans are interesting to me is that while they are clearly militaristic, I think it depends on interpretation on how aggressive they are. Already in-game they're established as erratic, not high aggression. Most fiction, including the first Michael Ely book and his novella of Planetfall, depicts them as fairly aggressive. But I think it's also possible to see them as the pre-Ruby Ridge/Waco militiamen who really claimed to just want to be left alone, to retreat into their compounds to pursue their own shadowy agendas. In the Spartans' case, their agenda is to practice Social Darwinism and role-play as ancient Spartans. They would certainly pick a fight for the sake of it, and to conquer wealth or tech that they cannot pursue. But I don't think their ideology is to inherently conquer the world. That's more like something they might end up trying to do.

So that way, if explain convincingly a new Senior Officer of the Unity and his subordinate crew then new faction could arrive.
Mining Officer
Repair and Maintenance Officer
Communications Officer
Cultural Experience Database Storage Officer
First Contact Officer

Seems sensible. There are a lot of spaceship crew roles in sci-fi that can be adapted. Domai is already a mining specialist so that works. I'm not sure what you meant by "Cultural Experience Database Storage", but funnily enough for my Second Ship project I have a Librarian faction led by a Unity data archivist. I haven't posted it yet.

Not sure if a First Contact Officer works because pre-SMAX there wasn't any sign of sentient alien life, but in retrospect that could be a cool idea. Maybe it's like some sort of anthropologist/speculative exobiologist geek who was trained to handle hypothetical alien contact. And when there weren't aliens beyond the mindworms, they doubled-down on prepping humanity to meet them in the future. Maybe it could even go into your idea of "deification of an ancient race whose monoliths are found on the planet: old religion was wrong, god is a different, to believe is a different."

--> Main Idea is Ecology. Gaians way is to assimilate with new conditions, accept them. The opposite way could be to restore especially Earth-like Ecology with relative animals/plants because it's best for humanity as a specie.

Ahhh, I made an terraforming faction (Planetary Settlers), but they're eco-friendly and weren't anti-Planet. Maybe I should've gone that direction. I do think having a central game conflict be between Planetformers (Ascent to Transcendence) and Terraformers (make Planet into Earth) would make for a really cool victory condition.

[...] -->  Free Drones raise the issue of equality and justice, the inadmissibility of exploiting the lives of the working class for the prosperity of the bourgeois class. In all over the human history this questions is appears, and will appears because of fundamental processes of social-economic relations. In conditions of Alpha Centauri story the objective to construct socially just society is strong enough to gather people from all other factions into separate one.

I've worked on a faction that's more focused on social oppression than class oppression, that I'm still trying to tweak. But I'm intentionally trying to make my fan factions reflect the '90s sci-fi that AC was, and the classical older works of sci-fi that preceded it, than current day anxieties. I find modern politics and culture wars exhausting, farcical, and tacky.

The idea of all known factions is to build a new home on that planet. The main opposite Idea could be that "we were wrong; this place is not good for us, it's bad; we need to search further on a new ship". Direction of human with this idea is not to construct for care here, but construct for leaving this dark unfriendly place to search another one. In such unwelcoming conditions as Planet gives, this "exodus" Idea could be strong enough to collect people from other factions.

Yeah a space program-focused faction that's based on escape, or returning to Earth, would be cool. Game mechanics-wise I'm not too certain how to make it though. Space techs are so late-game.

But that's okay, these ideas can just be purely hypothetical for now, to be implemented in a hypothetical AC 2 or spiritual successor that actually provides robust Social Engineering mechanics and enough modifiers to accommodate some of these concepts. And I do think that winning the Space Race, as in the link above, would be a cool victory condition. Nice callback to Civ.

Now, Planet will try to take control under human consciousness. A new faction is appeared when one of the colonies become a Formicary with humans driven by a Planet Mind.

Transcendence from the other direction, interesting.

The sudden appearance of a faction from the future. Entire colony base appears because of any kind of malfunction in a future experiments of time-traveling.

Sort of high-concept, but that's fine. SMAC already has a lot of sci-fi ideas that go beyond Ascent of Transcendence. I think an AC 2 should accommodate some of these as potential paths. Maybe one of them is to build an actual time machine, or more like a way to enter a different universe at an earlier time (say before Earth was ruined). And so a faction that is related to time travel would be cool. Really no idea how to make them balanced in gameplay, though. Maybe they have high tech but really low growth/morale.

Another mutation appears because of long time space radiation while flying on Unity. Now people could not feel normal in a planetary gravity conditions. Only underwater pressure make them feel OK.

Cool idea, that does help justify more water factions. Seems a bit unfair to give the entire ocean to Ulrik.

[Protok St]

So that way, if explain convincingly a new Senior Officer of the Unity and his subordinate crew then new faction could arrive.
Mining Officer
Repair and Maintenance Officer
Communications Officer
Cultural Experience Database Storage Officer
First Contact Officer

Seems sensible. There are a lot of spaceship crew roles in sci-fi that can be adapted. Domai is already a mining specialist so that works. I'm not sure what you meant by "Cultural Experience Database Storage", but funnily enough for my Second Ship project I have a Librarian faction led by a Unity data archivist. I haven't posted it yet.

Yes, the situation when datacenter carry a whole of humanity culture in digital form suggests a special Senior Officer. This idea is on the surface, and we both catched it. 

Not sure if a First Contact Officer works because pre-SMAX there wasn't any sign of sentient alien life, but in retrospect that could be a cool idea. Maybe it's like some sort of anthropologist/speculative exobiologist geek who was trained to handle hypothetical alien contact.

To send a first ship into interstellar space without a First Contact Officer? No way. This is just a necessity if we are developing the idea of additional positions for Senior Officers. This is just the norm of any sci-fi.

I've worked on a faction that's more focused on social oppression than class oppression, that I'm still trying to tweak. But I'm intentionally trying to make my fan factions reflect the '90s sci-fi that AC was, and the classical older works of sci-fi that preceded it, than current day anxieties. I find modern politics and culture wars exhausting, farcical, and tacky.

Cool! More factions for better future.
And "class oppression" - is a permanent condition of all known human history. It is a cycled process.

[MysticWind]

It's probably not a great idea to single-gameplay style factions, but given that SMAX added Probe-focused and water-focused factions, what else are they missing?

Air-focused factions would seem to be too OP. Maybe you can give a faction bonuses when they get to Air Power, though it would definitely have to be less OP than the Pirates' water bonuses, and they would need some characterization before they get to there.

[bvanevery]

SMACX didn't add the idea of a PROBE focused faction.  The Believers were already a PROBE focused faction, as they had +1 PROBE and would go Fundamentalist, resulting in +3 PROBE.  What the Data Angels did, was provide a Democratic counterweight to the Believer hacking.

Trying to make an air powered faction is sheer folly.  Either forget that you mentioned it, or find a way to start the whole game mid tech tree, with all factions rebalanced for that circumstance.  Could be a Scenario, for instance.  Everyone would have to have a baseline of production where planes and AAA units can be chucked out easily.  That's a lot of modding.

Also, any faction capability that only pays off in mid to late game, is close to useless in the real world.  Games are winnable long before then.  There's no point in some "powerful late game capability", because all late game capabilities are powerful.

The stylization of "late game units / capabilities" may have been popularized by Civ III, with for instance the Germans getting Panzers as a special unit late game, and the Americans getting the F-16.  But their tech tree also doesn't have any diversity, everyone learns exactly the same techs.  The order in which they are learned varies only ever so slightly, and there are almost no interesting consequences to moving up one side of the tech tree quicker than another.  There's basically no variety of play in Civ, everyone does the same things.

[MysticWind]

SMACX didn't add the idea of a PROBE focused faction.  The Believers were already a PROBE focused faction, as they had +1 PROBE and would go Fundamentalist, resulting in +3 PROBE.  What the Data Angels did, was provide a Democratic counterweight to the Believer hacking.

Believers could also fight, though, at least in the early game. Whereas the Angels are a PROBE-exclusive faction that can't do much else. I guess in their case their gimmick is -exclusive, while the Drones' and the Pirates' gimmicks are new and thus merely -focused.

Also, any faction capability that only pays off in mid to late game, is close to useless in the real world.  Games are winnable long before then.  There's no point in some "powerful late game capability", because all late game capabilities are powerful.

The stylization of "late game units / capabilities" may have been popularized by Civ III, with for instance the Germans getting Panzers as a special unit late game, and the Americans getting the F-16.  But their tech tree also doesn't have any diversity, everyone learns exactly the same techs.  The order in which they are learned varies only ever so slightly, and there are almost no interesting consequences to moving up one side of the tech tree quicker than another.  There's basically no variety of play in Civ, everyone does the same things.

That's very interesting to know. I like these high-level game design observations.

[bvanevery]

I'm still having trouble with the Data Angels in my mod.  I think they're an underperforming faction.

I did give them automatic acquisition of any techs known by 3 other factions, rather than making them infiltrate factions to get that benefit.  In the real world, the AI can't infiltrate factions all the way across the board.  Not unless they build sea bases that are reachable by sea from the Data Angels.  In that case, the AI is pretty compulsive about sending out Foil Probe Teams and probably would at least get the teams to their sea targets.  However, I'm not sure they'd use that possibly very long journey to infiltrate.  They might forget, and instead prioritize other disruptions.  I said to hell with that and made it easier on them.

They tend to be pretty strong in the early game because they're benefiting from an entire planet worth of low level research.  As strong research factions start to specialize and pull ahead though, they don't have much advantage anymore.

Mind control is rather overpowered in the stock game.  Factions on their last legs with almost no units or money at all, would magically pull probe team liberations of captured cities.  This was so gratuitous that it strongly smelled like a form of AI cheating.  An enemy who is pretty much almost dead should die already.  Not be rubber banded back into life for the umpteenth time.  It's not an interesting game mechanic, in fact it's the most damn annoying thing I ever encountered in SMAC.  Responsible for more rage quits and game uninstalls, than anything I care to remember.

So in my mod, I nerfed mind control.  It costs everyone twice as much as the original game.  This seems to put the brakes on the gratuitous capture shenanigans.  If a sea base is close to your capitol, it probably will be too expensive to take.  Not definitely, but probably.  I've seriously cut down the odds of a takeover close to home.  If you start spreading sea bases far out though, as one would likely be inclined to do in a big ocean, well you're just giving bases away to other factions.  So I don't do that, even in my modded game.

Heck, I probably won't make any sea bases at all.  They're usually just a liability.  I could bait the computer into sending a probe team all the way across the map, to take over a sea base I don't actually care about.  So that I can infiltrate the base and steal a tech!  Which would take me forever if I had to push units all the way across a Huge map to get to a distant enemy.  I have refrained from this dirty trick in most cases though.

If you're not mind controlling stuff, then probe teams with high PROBE are pretty pointless.  Even Elite teams are gonna die from being used, soon enough.  If you're just trying to steal techs, you might as well just send poorly trained and totally disposable probe teams from any old place.  Any faction can do that, they don't need a good PROBE rating to accomplish it.

I did cut out the PROBE penalties in my SE table.  That was part of the campaign against the overpowered mind control of the original game.  The downside is that leaves the Data Angels with pretty much no advantage.  They're not naturally going to come up with all the money needed, to take over bases and units willy nilly.  And it's too destabilizing to give that kind of advantage.

Basically, I don't consider mind control to be a good combat system or game mechanic.  I guess I kinda soft banished it, by making it not that useful in practice.  Not unless you're ridiculously wealthy.  In which case, you could probably win the game by other means anyways.

So I'm not quite sure what to do with my Data Angels.  They're kind of a one trick pony whose trick has been taken away.

For a long time my Data Angels had a 'dark' interpretation, where they were the poster child for Thought Control.  Recently though, I decided it's game mechanically pointless.  They don't need to wait until late midgame to jack their PROBE way beyond anything they rationally need to accomplish any task.  All they really need to do to get +3 PROBE is go Police State early in the game.  That's plenty.  So, the AI won't insist on any SE choice anymore.  It'll be my totally free will faction.  Conquerer Marr steps in as the poster child for Thought Control.  The human dialogue is regrettable, but at least the sentiments are in character for him.

[Nexii]

Yea I found the same when trying to boost up Data Angels to be a useful faction in the middle and late game. Even +3 PROBE wasn't really enough to make them decent. Either takes vastly reduced probe costs or something economic. I gave them +1 ECONOMY for now as I felt cheaper conversion was more of a Believers thing. May also give them a hidden immunity to negative RESEARCH but this would be more of a hacking cult sort of faction than open/democratic. Which to me seems more believable... anarchy is kind of the opposite of democracy

[bvanevery]

+1 ECONOMY in my SE table buys a lot.  Those choices, since they're worth so much money, are pretty constrained.  And only Morgan gets a pass on that, the ability to make money more easily without a hard choice of some kind.  I don't really want to change that.

Of course the problem is that to mind control, you need a lot of money.  It's a pretty pointless capability otherwise.

Well I could drastically lower their mind control costs, compared to other factions.  I just hate that whole game mechanic though.  If only there was something else to do with them...