Let's not fool ourselves: building custom factions is a big draw for a lot of us.  It might not be a perfect system, but surely we've all tried our hand at a custom faction once or twice.  Let's build one together with a playstyle in mind and see how it does, shall we?  Mind you this isn't precisely a min-maxing exercise, but an experiment to see if we can make some offbeat playstyles that fit together into a cohesive faction.  Doesn't have to be the best top tier race ever as long as it's functional and fun.

For structure's sake and to inform our choices a bit, let's nail down a couple choices so we have a framework in which to think.  I find the "Emperor's Will" affinity highly flexible, so let's run with that and see what we can do.  It makes the game much more influence centered, so let's try focusing on that a bit.  We know we get extra influence from building things and we can use that lnfluence for pretty much everything, so if we can make ourselves a decent influence machine, we could play pretty much however we want, right?  Perhaps we could even try a system conversion strat if we get the generation high enough.

What visual affinity would combo well with it? (besides United Empire of course, that would just be boring.)  Having complementary quest lines and rewards that help our influence would make sense I think.  To that end, Horatio gets a quest reward extremely early on that creates a per original pop influence boost.  They also get a system-wide improvement that adds more influence per pop in chapter 3.  Perfect.

If we're going for peaceful conversion, then pacifist politics make sense; we need to be out of war in order to convert a system after all.  A second ideal party to aim for would probably be religious; the Species Stability, Saints and Sinners, and Peace through Prayer all add up to a lot of free systems which will all be filled with glorious influence machines, while Make Love not War can help fight happiness issues early on and be replaced by Saints and Sinners later.  The Fair Trade Bill just further compounds our FIDSI, which includes even MORE influence, so long as we've got friends on the board.  Going with a republic means Saints and Sinners should force our systems to happy and eliminate the need for any happiness boosters beyond that point.

Hmm...aside from the risk of early rushes, I think we've got a good start for a long term empire plan.  What sort of population traits and faction traits would make a good mix?  What sorts of negative traits would be thematically appropriate?  Should we start with the classic Atoll starting planet or would a switch make sense?

Take it away, community!