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. 

DrTentacles wrote:

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.

The cost of an outpost  also scales with inflation, which doesn't help. 

But provided you are selling resources for dust, you can expand pretty quickly - I've certainly never felt hindered compared to other races. The colonizer travel time is still important, even for nearby systems - obviously you don't want to be settling outposts in dangerous and undefendable locations.

I certainly don't consider them one of the weaker races in the early-mid game. For a long time they were considered one of the strongest! Pirates and the nerf to income from minor factions may have hindered that.

Trade-routes do still grow super fast. Too fast. It's just from a very low base now. Too low. I don't know if they were really fixed or just made irrelevent.

DrTentacles wrote:

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.

The ability to sell planets is not very good, but only because it's hard to get the AI to buy them! The ability to pay dust for outposts is very good, as it saves you critical industry and travel time. It's excellent. It would be nice if the AI were more interested in any planets you wanted to sell!

What hurts the Lumeris is that they are focused on dust. But dust production produces inflation, which makes dust worth less. Focusing on dust production just means investing in a resource stream that devalues over time, and the more you produce, the faster it devalues! Removing inflation would go a long way to helping the Lumeris out.

They also suffered badly from the over-nerf of trade-routes. And since dust victory is too easy, it's usually turned off - making dust even more worthless. 

They have a good early game, which means they will usually still do okay. But their late-game is both lacklustre and uninteresting now, since any dust focus is too weak (due to inflation and/or trade route nerfs) to bother with.

Summary: buying planets is good. Fix inflation (remove it; it doesn't do what it's intended to do, and it hurts Lumeris badly) and balance trade-routes - they were overnerfed.

There are plenty of easy tactics that are abusable that I wont disclose here, problem is each faction has a gimmick in vanilla. Once you discover how said gimmick functions your likely to win. When you play a game where everybody knows the gimmick interesting things begin to happen. I think of it as a rat race.

The problem is some races gimmicks are easier to synergize and make them appear overpowered.  Like the normal galaxy settings and material expertise *caugh* or the cravers quest cruiser.

@Plutar Agreed, something about that cheesy tactic should be done, but an Empire wide tracking for the cost would really hurt expanstionnists and wouldn't really fix the issue in early, where it matters the most.

Imho, the cost should keep track of how many population were ever constructed on a system, to keep the same dynamic in early game without making it any more convoluted for newbies, while addressing this glarring issue.

Well, scaling from the first Riftborn pop is what I imagined too. I am just highlighting that you can avoid the scaling effect by building Riftborn elsewhere.

Here is a bold idea to consider: make costs of Riftborn scale with all Riftborn population in the entire empire - not just in the system. 

I would also bring attention to the mid to lategame possibilities combining the Industry/Militaristc government closely by default.
And the quest obtained law for -25% ship cost.
And yes I strongly agree some factions have an incredible headstart compared to others.

But I do find it difficult to suggest any adjustments. Rather than nerfing Riftborn, I suggest buffing the ones falling behind.

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.

Sassyljay wrote:

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.

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

You've hidden a lot  in the phrase 'buildings etc.'!

You're confusing two points: one is that Riftborn can indeed build additional population in a small number of turns as systems get more and more developed. That's fine and as it should be. As systems get more bonus FIDIS per pop, a new Riftborn pop becomes worth the additional investment of industry. (A Riftborn pop might be worth (in terms of the best return on investment) 250 industry on a new system, and 1000 industry on a highly developed one.)

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. (Even if Riftborn pops are not worth 1000 population on other systems, they are certainly worth 250 - so build them for 250 and ship them there.)

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.

And yes, this is the same issue with food conspumption being too low.