IDK. I don't want to turn this into a Lumaris thread, but the fact that dust purchased planets start as Outposts really gimps them as a race. 

First, the cost to buy an outpost scales extremely harshly. By even early-mid game, other races can churn out colony ships far faster than Lumaris can amass dust to colonize. Second, if you're using dust to buy prime real estate in distant corners of the galaxy, you usually have no actual means to defend your baby colony/outpost if it's attacked. I can't see buying an outpost being an advantage over rolling a fleet capable of defending it over with a colony ship in tow.

I agree on the trade routes being overnerfed. The Devs have been a little too eager with the nerf-hammer. Trade routes were definitely too good, but the nerf was over done.

Some races are more powerful than others, though. Riftborn are very strong. I think they're close to balanced on a low-resource galaxy, but not many people play that way. I also think game speed affects their power level, but I haven't tested enough. I believe they are much more powerful than normal on fast game speeds, however.

I think of all the races, Lumaris are the least powerful. Planet Brokers is simply a bad trait. I honestly can't understand what it's meant for.

Whether it's a buff or a nerf depends on numbers, but it would be possible to do as plutar says and remove the ability to 'feed' systems with Riftborn pops from a high-industry, low population system.

It' s not an elegant solution though.

That is not a buff believe me, riftborn players who are min/maxing there empire are abusing the cost of one population to make what I call feeder systems.  They colonize the stars that they want and any hot planet in between.  The inbetween systems only build pops moving them off with system development asap. Once there done with pops they are evacated/moved/ignored .  If riftborn pop costs scaled on a empire number basis there ability to abuse the strength of the riftborn pop would completely useless.  

What you suggest is essentially a buff, provided the cost increment would actually be smaller making Riftborn early game stronger resulting in other filler pops more easily accessible.

Dragar wrote:

Okay, that makes sense. I don't think we actually disagree much.

Let me put it this way:  let's take the first point you raise seriously, and address it. We could make Riftborn population have a worse return on investment (by increasing costs or reducing benefits). These proposals you suggested are valid ones. But you also note that Riftborn #4, #5 and #6 on the system are well costed - it's just that Riftborn #7+ (or whatever number) is far too good a payoff.

So we need to increase the cost of Riftborn #7. 

However! This brings us to the second point that you argue is uncessary. I think it is actually crucial to address this. Because even if we increase the cost of Riftborn #7 on the system, we can just build it as Riftborn #2 on another system and ship it there.

We can never address your issue #1 unless we address issue #2 first. 

Hope that makes sense.

You make a very good point, I hadn't even considered solutions. I just assumed that adjusting scaling from the first rifborn pop, so basically make 2#, 3#, 4#, 5#, 6# and 7# et al more expensive as randomnly making one riftborn pop jump in industry cost a bit bizarre and illogical. I need to make a rew riftborn games and put together some comparisions and offer proper solutions in this thread which I will do over the next couple of days. You've made me realise I need to look at this more thoroughly. 

heya I will clarify a bit better what I meant previously. I may well be wrong but I will clarify my opinions so what I am expressing is clear.

"You're confusing two points: one is that Riftborn can indeed build population quickly as systems get more and more developed. That's fine and as it should be."

I am arguing that isnt fine and it shouldn't be. Riftborn can build population quickly at the start and continue to build them quickly as the system develops and the population gets big. The return you get in FIDS from building Riftborn population is too much or they need to cost more to compensate or somethign needs to give.  

"The other is that you can bypass the requirements of infrastructure by just building pops at a small-pop, high industry system and shipping them outwards. This is probably not the intended design."

I am arguing this is unneccesary, only systems with poor industry, i.e only cold planets, need population sent to them. In my experience any system with reasonable industry, lets say some tier 0 planets or one hot planet, will grow quickly as Riftborn. There are factions that can compete with them, but that is due to imbalances they have, such as Craver's ship from their first mission or the Voydani's broken hero skill that gives bonuses to FIDS across the board. (although I imagine that surely must have been nerfed by now.)

Dragar wrote:

IceGremlin wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Riftborn population is supposed to be more costly to build as you have more pops. In practice, as this is a system effect, all it takes is one low-population with a good industry to churn out population and ship them all over the empire. This rather invalidates one of their main handicaps - and ruins their main theme of low-population worlds, which in turn makes their terraforming rather unnattractive. 

Which is functionally the same problem as Food has, whch is why I wanted percentage Food consumption for such a long time. I really don't think any of us want to deal with the horrors of Industry Consumption as a concept though.

Makes me wonder what would happen if they had Dust upkeep instead of Food consumption, as if they weren't like buildings enough already.

Industry Consumption... shudder

Dust upkeep would be an interesting spin, though we're now tying them to the market, dust and inflation problems.

Ahhh man I had wondered about dust upkeep like the broken lords in Endless legend but that is a really good point, tying them to market/dust inflation would not work. 

Do the rfitborn really need one world with high industry and low pop to multiply quickly? 

I really think they don't, the industry you generate just from riftborn pop, buildings etc easily compensates for the growing cost to build more pop, to be honest they could just increase the scaling cost on riftborn pop as a starting point to mitigate their devasting speed of expansion. The scaling of it just isnt working at the moment.

Dragar wrote:

Riftborn population is supposed to be more costly to build as you have more pops. In practice, as this is a system effect, all it takes is one low-population with a good industry to churn out population and ship them all over the empire. This rather invalidates one of their main handicaps - and ruins their main theme of low-population worlds, which in turn makes their terraforming rather unnattractive. 

Which is functionally the same problem as Food has, whch is why I wanted percentage Food consumption for such a long time. I really don't think any of us want to deal with the horrors of Industry Consumption as a concept though.

Makes me wonder what would happen if they had Dust upkeep instead of Food consumption, as if they weren't like buildings enough already.

I had taken a long break from Endless space 2 and have got back into it recently. I started a multiplayer game, 2 humans and 8 A.I, where I played United Empire and my friend chose the riftborn. Now I was aware from when I was previously playing, several months ago, that the riftborn were pretty powerful but I had hope some balance changes might have ocurred in the intervening time. 

Within about 40 turns it was clear to me that wasn't the case (unless they have been nerfed and then buffed). I didnt have a great start to be fair, in terms of position and not many fertile planets. My friend got going quicker than me, which is fine, but by the time we got to turn 40 I had around 225 research per turn from 3 systems and one newly colonised one with a total pop of around 19, my friend had a total of about 870 research per turn from 4 systems with about 22 pop. 

Now I understand there are factors that mean a player can get ahead but to have almost 4 times my research by turn 40 is pretty incredible. So I had a go with the riftborn myself and they are still downright broken. I am pretty amazed this hasn't been looked at yet. They can spread faster than other factions as they have no food upkeep on outposts and their +5 to all FIDS makes growing pop almost as good as system improvements, they start snowballing industry, science and dust really quickly, which makes the idea of having to use industry to grow pop as a hinderance fairly redundent as the rate they get industry far outweighs this disadvantage. In terms of faction balance it would be nice if a pass could be made over all the factions so in multiplayer I am not having to almost accept outright defeat by picking a poorer faction (particularly Horatio for example) as there are some large discrepencies here between some of the factions. I will have a look at some of the other factions for the previous offending issues that had been found before, such as the first craver mission giving a really powerful ship right in the early game, so I can make posts as I hope these things can be looked at.    

My main problem with the Lumeris is that their primary feature of buying new colonies becomes a non-feature before the game is over.  Horatio's splices always matter, the Empire can always buyout stuff with influence, the cravers always get tons of FIDSI from slaves, etc. etc.  But planet brokers simply becomes irrelevant once colonizing stops.

You know what would've been really interesting?  Giving the "planet broker" affinity the power to buyout OWNED systems with dust.  A scaling cost based on pops and improvements, of course.  THAT would never become irrelevant no matter the turn clock.

As to the Riftborn, I'm not sure what the best answer is to their startling growth speed that doesn't instantly tip them from "holy crap they have HOW many systems?" to "LOL look at the scrub actually playing Riftborn."