Salvager/Merchant Pirates Faction

"Our founders wished for prosperity.  That wish was destroyed with the wars.  However, our new prosperity will be freedom.  And we will live free and peacefully among a volatile universe." - Bartholomew Andrigan, bosun of The Dogstar

Homeworld: Scrapyard

Survivors of the battle worn planet Ermata VI-C, the Jackals desire to restore their people through rigorous means.  The masses of debris left from countless wars have been salvaged for unconventional designs, but these efforts have proven the worth of a populace that is determined to rise from the ashes.  The Jackals leaders' are many separate community heads of former captains, smugglers, and engineers.  Now that they have elevated themselves to the luxuries of robber barons, they are reluctant to call Ermata VI-C home and seek to expand their territory while creating a better haven for their people.

Faction Affinity: Profiteering

The Jackals can determine the cost (up to 35% difference) of a strategic resource or a luxury resource on the marketplace (once available) and consequently receive an amount of the resource produced by other players.  (Persists through a Marketplace ban) Costs  to change,   bonuses when controlling a resource.  Resource cost cannot be changed for 10 turns once chosen and will default to regular price once over.  Strategic resources cost more Industry to change than luxury resource cost.

Political Ideology - Pacifists

Gameplay Design

The Jackals have a difficult early game start and are heavily reliant on establishing an intended direction dependent upon the fast discovery of their surroundings.  Weak standard faction units means they must employ divertive means to avoid early war.  Natural advantages to Industry/Economic conditions give them a reasonable early strength to accommodate a weak presence in the early game.  The Jackals are an extremely cautious group and so choose to limit the amount of associations they wish to have.  As such, they are only ever able to be at war with one group and ally with one group.  Because of their reclusive nature, the Jackals are extremely fickle when it comes to their choice of associations and have the opportunity to switch their allegiance at a moment's notice.  Come mid-late game, their primary strength comes from their ability to exploit the Market and Cold War status while receiving large influence bonuses for agreements under their belt.  However, this also makes them the target of hostility as their hold of a resource can irk a player desperately trying to acquire said resource.  In such a case, the Jackals may choose to ally with a strong faction and issue bounties on the enemy's fleets (or ally's to divert aggression).  Their primary victory method is Diplomacy (ironically enough for being at Cold War with the majority of players).  By playing other empires against each other, the Jackals have the opportunity to achieve a sound peace for their own empire.

Appearance/Mood (Would simply like to include here)

The Jackals Cartel are mostly human, but have a diverse and well-knit society that includes many other races.  Ermata VI-C was largely a popular trading colony before Cravers and other belligerent species destroyed the peaceful means of life.  The Jackals Cartel was formed sometime after the reformation of these outposts and appointed veteran pioneers to re-establish their former means of livelihood.  The intended portrayal of these people is somewhat piratey/arid-world scavengers with gasmasks/laser tools, etc.  The inspiration of their mood would be of 16th century Nassau with visions to create a delinquent/luxurious means of living outside the law.  Mos Eisley of the Star Wars universe also has a strong thematic tie to the Jackals.

Their ships are slipshod, but ingenious inventions with rusted/space-hulk appearances.  The vessels have many angular attributes to invoke pirate-ship-esque images.

Factions Traits:

• Motley

-10%  Growth

-10%  Growth

+10% Cost on All Diplomacy Actions

• Salvagers

+ 10% /5% Exploitation from Asteroid Fields + Dry Planets

• Distant Traders

+Receives Information Exchange no matter what 

+Able to benefit from adjacent systems trade routes  (8%)

+Can propose trade and trade agreements with Cold War factions + large  bonuses on success; Costs  rather than

• Subtle Among Stars

-Can only be at peace/allied with one group

+Can only be at war with one group

+Can never share Vision

+Can bypass a Truce to Propose Peace at cost of former ally 

• A Divided People

-/+ No Capitol (Unsure if being implemented, but means they cannot be beaten by Supremacy/Must be eliminated for a Supremacy victory)

+Different Empire Plan Choices suited to Jackals gameplay

• Unconventional Expertise

+10% Cost Reduction on Unit Buyout

-5% Military Upkeep on Faction Units

-10% Military Upkeep to Allied Units

Combat

-Very significant lack of Defense on most vessels 

+Above average Damage, Initiative and low Health on most vessels + Fast

+Galleon vessel has massive amount of Health and Defense but extremely low Initiative and below average Attack, powerful Damage, Slow

-/+ Can increase Attack at cost of 10% Health on all ships

+Powerful Manpower – Infantry specialists 65%/average tanks 35%/glass cannon planes

-Below Average System Defense

 Faction Technologies

• Misdirection (Era I)

  +5% Approval Ratings

  +Scouts able to feint attacks by neutrals

• Looted Vessels (Era II) 

  +Chance to acquire a vessel prototype defeated in battle - 10% (Can be improved with Techs to 20%) Prototypes receive +10% Defense bonus, - 10% Attack

• The Strings of Battle (Era III) 

  +The Jackals may issue Bounties on fleets through  in own/Cold War territory.  Defeating the Wanted fleet rewards the responsible faction with 125%  cost of the fleet; the Jackals may issue a bounty on their own or allied fleets to diverge the flow of battle; Wanted fleets cannot be sold under any circumstances; if the Wanted fleet defeats another fleet or 6 turns pass, the Bounty expires; Wanted units suffer -10 Initiative

Thanks!  Appreciate the input.  I was determining exactly how to go about balancing the Affinity, but I suppose there will be an upper limit of 35% regular cost at max, but they are also able to lower resource cost as well (by the same 35%).  In this way, the ability to analyze your opponents and determine whether you want to sanction or distribute something is much more significant.  The Industry cost for changing will take some turns to accomplish, but can help stead over a strong opponent.

In the case that another war is declared on the faction, the faction would receive a somewhat comical refusal that until their current war was over, they could not be at war.  This directs some of the attention away from the Jackals.  They either can or cannot be a threat.  I wanted to capitalize that they have an extremely fragile early game and so while their units can be a bit more numerous, it requires the condition that they have the ability to maintain a war, which they truly do not.  As they have weak initial fleets, their War Exhaustion will be difficult to sweep aside.  If another faction declares war after you have been in battle, it will be difficult to recover but there are ways.  By their nature, they are capable of becoming economic powerhouses, but this is only if you let them engage in Cold War trading.  Sometimes it's a benefit, especially if you're behind and can identify a stronger enemy than them.

The ideal scenario would be to get into a war, receive an ally, put a bounty on the allied fleet, and then abandon the ally by proposing peace with the enemy leaving the former ally in Cold War status, but still Wanted.  If this fails, they are largely set back by having invested big Influence expenditure into a tactic that did not pay off and possibly making the enemy stronger.  But this is where Cold War trading and the Affinity maintain security.  It's a fine line of finding the correct opportunities to be friendly, ignore, or actively go after someone.  I'm sure there are things I'm not taking into account but this is a base outline after all and I thank you again for bringing up those points!

EDIT: As part of clarification of their gameplay, they're going to want to throw out bounties (which can be assigned to neutrals) and trade constantly to compete in the late game.  It will contribute to eventually having a respectable fleet, but even if these opportunities don't arise, they're probably way ahead in the Diplomatic victory either way.  There's also good reason to ally or make war with the Jackals as soon as possible so it's truly a gamble on all fronts to play with them.