I would very much like to see the biophobic trait moved to the Riftborn population, rather than as a faction trait. There is an idea for this. It does have balance implications, but letting Riftborn use minor pops to colonize fertile planets would be much more thematic and might give them a needed boost.

Normal.

What speed do you play on?

I tested it and you are correct there are no additional pops for colonizing same system planets.  The thing about Riftborn though is that they are not population dependent, they can still have very good industrial science and dust output with relatively lower population (especially industrial if they get a few lava planets). 

I only play vs AI (endless difficulty, same map set ups in the expert guides)  but I find the Riftborn are pretty good at expanding early, not as good as lumeri or cravers, but a lot better than horatio and unfallen.  Since the riftborn mechanic is based on increasing the costs per population it is relatively easy to set up a small productive 1 or 2 planet system somewhere and have them produce a pop every turn and then just ship the riftborn to other planets.   Since the first 30-50 turns are the most crucial the ability to set up 4-6 working systems will pretty much assure a victory vs the AI irrespective of the population issues.  

I can't speak to PvP play, so I will let more experienced folk take that discussion but I can say fom my experience Riftborn are pretty easy wins agianst the AI , and I would put rank them third, just below lumeris and empire (although cravers and voydani can be better if they get a good start).  

Dragar wrote:

amiable wrote:

I'm confused by this.  I find the riftborn one of the easiest races to start with, especially because colonizing other planets in your home system adds a population (with the +5fidsi bonus)

Does it? It moves a population; I'm not sure it adds one.

Huh, I was pretty sure it adds a population.  I could be wrong.  In any event my point about early expansion still stands.

amiable wrote:

I'm confused by this.  I find the riftborn one of the easiest races to start with, especially because colonizing other planets in your home system adds a population (with the +5fidsi bonus)

Does it? It moves a population; I'm not sure it adds one.

I'm confused by this.  I find the riftborn one of the easiest races to start with, especially because colonizing other planets in your home system adds a population (with the +5fidsi bonus) and producing settler ships and getting colonies established is very fast.  It's pretty easy to have 5-6 colonies up and running by turn 30 (more if you are lucky).  

Contrary I love biophobic applying to all pops, given you are going to start with sterile and your colonization mechanic makes acquiring anything else inefficient it would not really be functional to use minor pops for it. If anything it'd be more tedious having to migrate them there after the industry-outpost.

Especially later when you want to terraform away from fertile and into sterile, it doesn't force you to try and purge your minor pops - whereas this would. It'd be fine if there was a direct method to purge, but given there isn't, I couldn't approve of that.

Bonjour tout le monde,

I've been playing a lot of riftborn lately, and they're basically no match for other races, even the AI can kill me :(

Biggest problem, they take too long to generate people. The minor fraction population they start with, reproduce too slowly and also you need level 2 system to get them on other planets, eco buildings  are rare for riftborn and building a riftborn population takes a lot of time. Even if I focus my riftborn on military to rush another player, it's futile because they can outperform me and close the gap in military within turns, and then outright kill me.

They're far too slow and weak, that's a problem. I generally like the idea of this create people and focus on one, military, expansion or system improvement. But there's no benefit in either way, cause they're too slow.

Maybe this could be changed by making their ships OP. They're a 4D species, meaning they're ships should only take 60% of the damage. This would make them more defensible and viable as a military force.

Also I think they should've portals instead of space ports. making trading and population movement extremely easy and giving them an advantage there. They're 4D people anyway, they shouldn't travel like normal people do they should go to the fourth dimension and speed things up. 

I think this would make them more balanced, right now, they're just too inferior to other races. If you start building your pop, you're almost all the time falling behind, and if you don't you're falling behind because you're people are working slower.

Okay, I managed to go eco only research wise and mass expand. by reaching turn 35 I was compatible, so to say. But I still think riftborn are to vulnerable early game, especially when you consider that it  is much easier to invade planets now. If you start next to a craver you're basically dead.

I happen to play the Riftborn. If you would like to see me conquer the galaxy (a four arm in this case) or get totally stomped by the AI, check out my Riftborn Let's Play. Episode 1 ends with a nice little puzzle and I am about to post Episode 2 which is pretty exciting. 

Riftborn Let's Play

In terms of the balance for Riftborn, I think its pretty fair in the early-mid game. I agree with some of the other folks here that there is certainly a trick to using the minor population as a way to boost recources. Their population is expensive, but they are able to colonize fairly rapidly (since outposts don't draw food), they can inhabit lava and ash planets which suit their playstyle fiarly well. One thing that I tend to find is that systems have an over-all temperature, which means you seldom find a lava planet right next to an ice planet for example. That can be tricky, because you need the production from the hot planets and the science from the cold planets, but if you settle a cold system its hard to get pop there natively. This is why I think it's pretty important to get System Modernization to send population around the empire. 

The trick with Riftborn is to develop the other races in your empire.  When I play Riftborn, they are usually the 3rd or 4th biggest race in my empire.  Get to move your races around as soon as you can, that way you can fill in any defecits quickly.

It's more fun to defeat Horatio with Horatio (in Riftborn ships)!

Get Riftborn ships right and they are very powerful!

I wrote this in a different respone, it was originally a response to a question about the unfallen.  Hope this helps you a little bit. 

Quoteing yourself feels very strange 

 The most difficult race to play by far are the riftborn do to there population mechanic and lack of early access to resources.  

But yes, the AI could definetly use a improved scheme to follow for effectiveness.

The riftborn are the most diffuclt but probably the most rewarding faction once you master how to play them.

They are the polar opposite of the unfallen, you look for hot miserable planets with positive annomolies and you expand like a jackrabbit.

You take everything you can as quickly as you can, because you can have 6 outposts going at the same time without any loss of growth to any particular system.  Then you use one or two of your systems as population generators to get more riftborn pop in your high volume systems ASAP since riftborn pop become exponentially more expensive.  You simply have one to two systems pumping out one riftborn a turn then you migrate them to where they are needed on a turn by turn bases, it takes ages to set up becasue of the travel time but if done right, they can snowball into a unstoppable industry powerhouse.  

The easiest factions to play well IMO are the UE by far.  The sophons economy is too delicate to make them easy, and being able to buy out with there excess influence makes teching/shipbuilding much more straight foreward.  

Currently, on fast, the Voydyani are probably the most powerful race due to there mobility in MP and there heavy hitting medium class coordinator ships, same goes for UE's coordinator ships, heavy hitting carriar capable repairing capable all one one'ers.  

 I know nobody asked but as sophon you skip your medium's and jump to carriar now.  The damage slots on the medium ships don'tt make them versitle enough.  The lumens and riftborn suffer the same issue, but there hunter medium ships offer more function to make then worthwhile.  The sophons medium hunters are the current glass cannons in the game, this is all of course speaking from the G2G balance mod.

Kinetics are in a weird place, there usefulness falls to a very specific counter (bombers) and missles, but kinetics themselves for base damage are not the way to go. 

Feel that when I play The Riftborn too...

Survive mostly every 1:st attack but then the second attack I lose the Flotilla and hero. 

I can't understand why they are weaker than most Faction. I got trouble play with them otherwise... I'm slipping way back when I play With others AI.

Is there no Turorial or should there be an fix to this?

Whenever I've played against the Riftborn, they have always been the weakest race, for whatever reason.

I agree with your analysis, and think your ideas are good, especially the ones which develop the additional dimension.  That could be very interesting!

I hope the devs read your OP, and decide to go with these ideas.