I'm playing Lumeris in a Normal-sized galaxy with a few constellations. I was throwing probes out randomly into deep space when I got notification my probe had bumped into a minor faction's ship on a different constellation. I had tons of Dust and Influence, so on a whim, I decided to First Contact them, Bribe them up to 100, and Assimilate them in one swoop.

I now have a minor faction, a few units of Lumeris population, and several outposts in a different constellation... despite not having Rare Earth Foams at all. Man, the things people will do for Dust...

So, logistics questions about how the Lumeris got there aside, do you think we should be able to assimilate minor factions and build outposts in systems we can only reach via probe?

I think it is fine to contact them via probe, like having a semi autonomous machine with tools instaled to have a 2-channel communication running is really not that different to have one lumeris guy to talk in a ship and then leave. I mean, you meet them and they can destroy your ship and still talk to them seems weirder to me.

XR17 wrote:

I think it is fine to contact them via probe, like having a semi autonomous machine with tools instaled to have a 2-channel communication running is really not that different to have one lumeris guy to talk in a ship and then leave. I mean, you meet them and they can destroy your ship and still talk to them seems weirder to me.

Funny thing is we also gave them 500+ Dust through that probe.

It is a fantasy space age, I suppose. I don't think there's anything wrong per se with assimilating a faction you can't visit in person.

A nice touch would be to limit movement of pops until a gravitic string link or rare earth foams can be established. With population demographics being such an important part of ES2, it'd be great to have changes to it be more dynamic. Picture yourself playing the Cravers, capturing a new world for consumption, then sending off a fraction of the hapless haroshem populace to one of your semi-depleted systems for consumption and bringing in half of your depleted homeworld to begin the harvesting process.