Basic Story

"All life is precious and the needs of the many outweigh the few. For the sake of potential generations, we, existing, suffer for you."

The Sufferers are a race obsessed with causality and consequence. This obsession has lead to a paradox of sorts as their knack for seeing how small interactions can have large consequences, combined with their altruistic nature, has made them some of the most skilled and beloved diplomats in the galaxy, but, for a people so utterly devoted towards the care of all forms of life, they impose upon themselves cruel and unusual self-modifications and seemingly disallow the creation or enjoyment of any pleasure.

When the Sufferers first discovered the concept of entropy, revolution swept across their planet. Their every action and every thought became devoted wholeheartedly towards avoiding or otherwise surviving the distant but inevitable heat death of the universe. To this end they allow for no waste of energy and have heavily modified their own DNA to adapt to their self imposed torment as they do everything and anything within their power to delay or avoid the destruction of life.

For the Sufferers, there is no greater sin than fire. To this end, the fires of war must not be permitted to burn and the flame of progress must burn slowly and without waste.

Basic Feel

An internally unstable race that NEEDS to be politically involved, thrives off of peace, and must routinely sacrifice short term for long term gains.

Suggested Affinity:

From Every Angle: The Sufferers begin the game with every ideology unlocked and have more volatile elections (more frequent turnover rate, nearly impossible for the current party to stay in power)

Depending on which ideology is elected in the most recent election, the sufferers will have different traits activated.

     -Pacifist: Generate war exhaustion at 3x rate, gain x% additional influence production for every empire you are at peace/alliance with. Influence cost of Mediator is reduced. Small approval boost.

     -Militarist: Gain the ability to declare war until the next election, Damage and Defense on fleets is increased by x% for every empire you are at peace/allied with, lose no approval for wars you declare until the next election.

     -Religious:  Gain the ability to use luxury resources until the next election. You exert greater diplomatic pressure on other empires (can make demands easier), dust from trade routes increases by x% for every empire you are at peace/allied with, pirates will not attack you or your trade routes, increased effectiveness/AOE of propaganda.

     -Scientist: Gain the ability to convert stored food into science (can starve a planet if overused), science costs are reduced for any tech already discovered by an empire you are at peace/allied with

     -Industrialist: Gain the ability to convert stored influence into industry. Production costs are reduced by x% for every empire you are at peace/allied with.

     -Ecologist: For every empire you are at peace/allied with, food production is increased by x%, the production cost of colonist ships is reduced, the population threshold is lowered slightly

Suggested Traits

Butterfly Effect: Every trade route with another empire generates some influence. Ideologies within your own empire will be (slightly) affected depending on the dominant ideology of the empire the trade route is with.

Tears Bring Joy: The Sufferers are unaffected by an "Unhappy" approval rating (can still be in "rebellion"), but have no access to approval tech/buildings and certain approval laws.

Trivial to Travail (? needs work...): The Sufferers cannot use luxury boosters (unless the Religious are the current elected ideology)

No one is an Island: For every war being waged in the galaxy, the sufferers lose approval and gain approval for every declaration of peace/alliance.

Mediators: For a cost of influence, the Sufferers can force peace between any two warring parties (except for itself) and both parties will receive a gift of dust proportionate to the Sufferers approval rating at no cost to the Suffers.

Love of Life: Unable to declare war (unless Militarists are currently the leading ideology)

No One is an Island: The Sufferers receive and lose certain amounts of approval based on the number of factions in peace vs at war with each other.

Genuine Care: When the Sufferers generate enough political influence to make a demand, a gift of dust proportionate to their current approval rating is given to the other empire at no cost to the Sufferers. 

Cold Engines: The Sufferers have a reduced ability to generate industry and science. (but they still generate it)

Where There's Smoke: The Sufferers begin the game knowing the starting positions of every faction (but don't come into contact with them) and have portions of the map revealed wherever another planet is settled by any faction.

No population bonus (Not much breeding going on because they are too focused on figuring out a way for future generations to survive.)

Suggested Population Affinities:

Pacifist, Altruist, Schemer

Feel free to make suggestions about their traits/affinities and such (especially about the ideology bonuses), I'm not exactly the best at balancing out my ideas. ^_^

I just got done changing things up a bit. Now the sufferers are a little bit more nosy than they were before with their "no man is an island" and "mediator" traits.

I removed their "waste not" trait because it detracted from their need to be ploitical, but it could be put back in (basically it just gave them industry for every ship destroyed in their territory and every ruin explored.)

All in all I think things are finally fairly balanced and rounded out while unique enough to be interesting... Feel free to point out any oversight I may be having.

I just added in the "Where there's smoke" trait to give them the advantage of knowing where other factions are and where they are expanding to while still requiring they venture out and explore to make contact. I never really liked how the Drakken instantly met everyone in EL. Granted, it gave them the advantage of being able to trade 'n stuff with litterally everyone, but, at the very least, I dont think that would fit the Sufferers.

The "Antientropic Armor" tech is meant to better compliment their immunity to war fatigue by giving them generally better defenses than anyone else. This also helps them avoid being wiped out too early in the game by acting as a sort of cover for their reduced industry production. (may need slightly reduced damage output for balancing reasons, but eh.)

With it, ship building is somewhat simplified for The Sufferers and anyone who goes to war with them knows that they could be in for a long campaign.

These tech(s) aren't given to them automatically, they still need to research it, like any other armor tech. But variants of this armor would replace any variant armor techs on the tech tree.

looking it over, I think that's all They'll have added to them... I know I may have said that before but I'm not really seeing any other area where they are sorely lacking.

Any other unique techs they could have could be designed by Amplitude (If I could be so lucky as to win) and so I dont want to nail anything down too hard. Best to keep things a little loose here and there.

Besides, If I add too much more it will be a big ol wall of text. lol

Ah geez, thanks Digitalhawk96, Your words are very kind and I'm grateful that you took the time to say them. Like, really, thanks.

Im always trying to refine ideas as I develop them, so it means a lot to have someone see that.

Speaking of refining, I'm concerned that the story bit I've written so far doesnt directly tie into the endless universe, though I'm glad that at the very least I've communicated what they're all about. Does anyone have any ideas on what could get chopped or changed to shoehorn some stuff in? (if its really needed)

[Paragraph Cut]

Thank you to everyone who has voted so far. I'm not leading the charge by any means right now, but It's nice to at the very least have others think The Sufferers are worth voting for. ^_^

I cut some stuff out of my posts after realizing that any additional details I provided about the Sufferers was technically increasing their story description and so could be considered as part of the 200 word limit. (Side comments in reply posts and stuff like that.)

Basically all I cut was how I'm not sure what they should look like, but i like glowing dust tattoos, and how I'd like to compare their goals a bit with the Endless just to show a contrast of sorts.

carolean7 wrote:

...the part about harmful self-modification doesn't add much and isn't even reflected in the faction's traits.

Ya i know what you mean, I was hoping that that could be communicated through their need to turn food into science. The idea was, while not starving the people, you would need to prevent them from eating every so often to research tech. (This also is sorta kinda implying conducting experiments on the populace in some way maybe, i dunno)

I'm hoping that science production is juust tight enough to make things so that it hurts a little when you convert food, forcing your overall population levels to lag a little behind everyone else.

I had an original idea for a self cannibalizing race, but I remembered Amplitude deciding that population loss was too steep a price to pay so this is kinda how that evolved.

I've seen a few submissions so far that disallow their factions from declaring war. This always concerns me, especially if there is no alternative system. If the Sufferer's lose a system to another faction, they have no means to get it back. Can you provide an alternative to expand if war is off the table? Or maybe drop this trait and just make their military weak to dissuade war, like I did in my submission?

When it comes to war, I was thinking that their immunity to war fatigue and on average superior defense would win them their wars. In order to take territory, someone would have to declair war on them. And, generally not being warlike, lets assume a system gets taken OH NO! But now the attacker has a problem. Being satisfied with what they've taken, they offer truce but the Sufferers reject it. All the sufferers lose in continuing the war is a little approval dip. Everyone else suffers war fatigue so the longer it goes on the stronger the sufferers become in comparison. 

It's a bit complicated, ya, and it all sort of depends on how much "war exhaustion" actually plays into things in the final game

(If i could get some dev feedback on that in particular, that'd be awesome!) My understanding is that that system will be pretty big in the new game.

... Re- looking things over, however, I may have misunderstood things originally and just made it so my race is just  losing the only out it has in wars.... if thats the case I should probably revise.

I DID have a second idea on how their war setup should work though. Alternatively, I would think it to be a good idea to make it so that they can only declare war when the militarists win the vote. (Which would be infrequent because they are set to be pacifists by default, but not impossible due to the chaos from "from every angle"

That COULD also work I guess... it would probably require some balancing around it but If this whole "no war but no war exhaustion" thing is kinda crappy at the end of the day...

AHHHHHHHHH, that makes more sense... well then, thanks for clearing that up! lol

Now if only my entry had a shot at making a comeback this late into the competition.... sigh.