"We have a lot of questions for a robot faction ... Never despair, we have two more factions coming!"

"What do you think, maybe one of them will be a robot faction?"

"Well, it could be. I'm not gonna say anything. We're notoriously pretty good at hiding the secrets from the community, like, they never find out stuff in advance. So I don't think they're going to find out anything about the next faction."

"Especially not if they delve into the XML file."

"Yeah, please don't do that. Stop doing this."

...

"We're just saying that it's going to be very different, very alien. So, we can leak that it's not going to be one of the classic factions. It's a brand new one."

GET HYPE

Strong hints that the new faction will be robots. Confirmed not anything old like automatons or sowers, but something new that most likely builds on those concepts with a new unique spin.

How do the robot hints, the Timelord hint, and the evidence that points to them being ecologist/pacifist gel together?

Cyborgs with cybernetic doubles of their organic organs? (Like Timelords' two hearts?)

Robots that have learned to become hippies due to a war that nearly wiped out their species? (Like the Time War?)

Sentient machines with crazy time travel powers? (cuz like TARDISes?)

Discuss.

SpaceOrbs wrote:

I think this might be what the Stell look like:

The things on the top of their heads looks like the prosthesis they mention in the XML description. Plus, they're described as survivors and wanderers, which fits the refugee theme of this picture.

Or that could just be a hat...

The devs have admitted that they sometimes use filler aliens and spaceships to represent a generic concept.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

I'd still say Automaton or Sowers terminators. They grew organic skin and forgot who they were, which would be the plot of their faction quest.

And they have to kill Sarah Connor at the end of the quest line?

ajkrivo wrote:

[snip]

Discuss.

Speculators on this forum thank you.

I think this might be what the Stell look like:

The things on the top of their heads looks like the prosthesis they mention in the XML description. Plus, they're described as survivors and wanderers, which fits the refugee theme of this picture.

The Pilgrims ARE religious!  The Wiki is wrong.  I knew I wasn't crazy!

Honstly speaking in game files can be mix of real names of the factions that will be there and misguiding names. Unfallen are supposed to be pcifists or at least that were their original design. It sounds reasonable to have at least 1 major faction per political option and for minors to represent all combinations of political options and types. But honestly game content doesnt have to be like numbers there can be 1,2,4,5,9,10 there is no obligation to give symetry to this game. Factions have alot of traits and they are intended to be asymetrical rest of the game might be asymetrical too. Not each political-type combo must be present among minor factions. Mine guess about 7th faction is that they will be mechanical partially or completely. 

 I've seen some threads popping up speculating on Major factions, but none on Minor factions, and I've recently noticed some patterns that make me think the two are deeply related.  The game promises to have 16 minor factions and 8 major factions, which is a total of 24 factions, or 6x4.  This last is significant because there's some major holes in how the minor factions look.  For example, we have three militarist minor factions (Gnashast, Hissho and Tikanan) while only one Pacifist (the Haroshem).  People have noticed that the game lately skews militarist politically, and this is hardly a surprise if it's far easier to assimilate militarists than it is to assimilate pacifists.  It seems more likely to me that the ultimate goal is to "balance all parties out," but to account for that, you have to look at all factions.  Then some patterns begin to shake out.

Further observations: Each minor faction has a single "type," which seems to determine what sorts of ships they build (it looks like scavengers build pummelers and technologists build positrons; I'll look more closely the next time I play, as I don't remember seeing unique ships for primitives or eusocials).  These are unique to the minor factions, so we might have another 4x4 pattern going.  We also have a unique faction per type except we have two Technologists with Science faction (though I seem to remember Pilgrims originally being Religious before they were changed).  This might mean that idea is nonsense, but let's assume for now that it's a pattern that only the technologists break.  In that case, we have 4 technologists (a complete set), 3 eusocials, 2 primitives and 3 scavengers.

Finally, half of the races have an "opposite" faction as their minor race.  The Cravers get the Haroshem (Militarist vs Pacifist), the Lumeris get the Gnashast (Pacificist and Militarist), the Horatio get the Z'Vali (Religious and Scientist).  Three races break this: The United Empire gets the Hissho (Industrial and Militarist), and the Sophons get the Pilgrims (Science and Science, though again, I seem to remember Pilgrims being Religious originally), and the Vodyani, who are pure. This might mean there's no pattern here, or that there is: the United Empire is intended to have an Ecologist counterpart but it doesn't exist yet, and the Sophons were intended to have a Religious counterpart, but they were changed to Science to allow the Eyder to be Religious.

So, let's look at this assuming (and it's a big assumption) that the future patterns will generally break this way: There are 4x4 minor factions for each type, and Amplitude tries to avoid having the same faction for the same type twice.  Let's further assume that each remaining major faction has an opposing political opinion as its minor race (and that all remaining major factions will get a minor faction which, given the Vodyani, is not necessarily true), and that we'll have a political balance of 6x4.

We know the two remaining major factions are the Unfallen and the "Timelords."  We're so far missing an Ecological Major Faction.  If we assume a counter-balance point, then we expect to see an Industrial minor faction.  The only industrialist minor faction is technologist, so we would expect this new faction to be eusocial, primitive or scavenger (Scavenger Industrialists feels particularly appropriate, as does Eusocial industrialists).  I would guess, right now, that the Unfallen are Ecological.

This leaves one remaining faction.  We're missing an industrialist, ecological and pacifist faction, but if we had a pacifist major faction, we have no new minor faction to give them (all the militarists are taken).  Of course, we could just give them one of the existing ones: Perhaps we finish up the ecological minor factions, give one to the United Empire, and then move a militarist over to our new Pacifist major faction, but I find it just as likely that they don't want every faction to feel politically the same (nothing drives the Empire towards ecology right now, which is interesting!).  Personally, I think it most likely that we'll see an Industrial major faction with a ecological minor faction.

So, perhaps the Unfallen will be Ecological, with an industrial minor faction (perhaps scavenger)

The "Timelords" might be Industrial, with an ecological minor faction (perhaps primitive)

That leaves us with two remaining minor factions, both pacifist, perhaps one is eusocial ("utopians"), and the other primitive ("space hippies")

I believe that we gave some precise elements regarding that last faction during our Endless Day stream. I can't be bothered to watch myself talk for an hour, but if you guys want to fish for information, it's all there on Twitch.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

They may have merged the Sowers & the Automatons in a faction ? C.O.G.1

(= conglomerate of the gadget ones :) )

The more I think about it, a robotic faction makes a lot of sense.  The Vodyani might be seen as a sort of robotic faction, but a staple of Amplitude is to have alternate approaches to things, and a race that needs to literally build its population, like the Vodyani need to buy their population, or one that uses diverts some of its industry to supplement (or replace) its food might make for an interesting play experience.  So perhaps the timelords will be some sort of robot-race

(If not, this seems a fertile piece of territory to explore in an expansion)

vahouth wrote:

What if I told you that Frogsquadron could be trolling us and they are indeed in the game?  

But in those datamined info was just a list of ES1 faction, nothing new. So don't looks like real materials.

*tinfoil hat on*

I saw that, but it all depends on the emphasis and what that last clause is connected to.

Is it "Shall I tell you that most of this data was bogus placeholders imported from ES1 to make you guys talk?"

Or "Shall I tell you that most of this data was bogus placeholders imported from ES1 to make you guys talk?"

Very different implications. The dream is alive!