This is not a balance topic, first of all. It can be, but generally I think there's an agreement that the ability to snipe good Outposts is decent, but not necessarily terribly exciting.

This is more of a topic on utility, strategic depth, and fun, because Planet Brokers is an extremely simple ability that has less to it than the Vaulters Involuntary Nomads, which is a mere trait where Planet Brokers is supposed to be an entire Faction Affinity. You can settle Outposts instantly at distance... and that's it. Not very interesting compared to temporal warp spells, long distance teleporters, or buying out improvements with your sheer will and Influence, is it?

Personally, I have one larger idea right here (Lumeris Real Estate Development), where Planet Brokers can open up Planetary Properties in friendly empires systems, and pay to construct new, mutually beneficial buildings on them using Dust, tying up the Lumeris theme of real estate shenanigans, and completing the Pacifists theme of "overlapping property" with Vines and Sanctuaries. (It would not, however, work like a Sanctuary- no population, just new buildings, and the potential to "liquidate" the shiny new improvements as a slick economic backstab)

Of course, the best part would be backstabbing your enemy by forcing peace, making them your friend, and forcing through that downtown development plan on Auriga with the casino and hotel, city council and zoning department be damned!

What are some other peoples thoughts on the Planet Brokers affinity, balance or otherwise?

Daynen wrote:

This does sound thematically appropriate and would certainly make the affinity more interesting.  I think the Lumeris have simply fallen prey to feature creep; the Hissho and Choir are so vastly different from the standard races that the Lumeris seem very simplistic and passive (not to be confused with pacifist because they're also that) by comparison, leaving their gameplay very uninteractive.

Of course, the Sophons have a similar problem, but that's another thread...

You're certainly correct that it's mostly feature creep, but that's why we have updates and the like. Unfortunately I feel the Lumeris started falling behind in their design depth as soon as the next faction was added in Beta, as even factions like Riftborn and Unfallen are more interesting despite being Vanilla factions.

Sophons are similar. Both factions were in the game early on, and were overshadowed almost immediately as more vanilla factions were added to early access.

Of course they also both suffer a bit from imbalance in their intended strategy- Science lacks bite due to a dearth of Empire Improvement technologies, and Dust lacks bite/depth due to inflation. Same goes for anyone with Influence who isn't UE.

Dragar wrote:

If you're investing time and resources into developing, possibly even filling a system - are you really turning a profit?

Yeah that's the thing, to turn a profit means you have to get back more Dust than the equivalent amount of resources you invested. And you also have to get more Dust than the relative potential future value of the system, or else you're just giving your opponent a virtually free boost to income. So you'd need to sell a developed system for like... millions of Dust to actually turn a profit.

Like, you would already need back the buyout price of all the improvements you built, and then some. Which is why nobody even sells Outposts (which is what Planet Brokers actually does), as a reasonable asking price would be way over any reasonable players budget.

YertyL wrote:

...

That is not at all what I would call a profit. If those systems have been developed at all, they are already worth tons and tons of Dust more than what you're asking for. You would need to ask for at least the sum of the buyout prices of all buildings on the system, plus the Dust value of the original outpost, and all of that after accounting for inflation.

That's ignoring the Dust value of any population, the planet types, any anomalies, the total number of planets, any Luxury deposits, any Strategic deposits, location... A full "real estate appraisal" of that system would probably be a few thousand Dust at bare minimum.