Hello.

If you played lately, you might feel the same as i do.
A) Taxi system has been "removed" from the game, now fleet movement modules are tied to heroes only. I can see why they did that and how it might work. What i mean is:
1. Now you have to be ready for war, if you send strongest fleet to enemy territory and leave systems unprotected, you yourself might be back invaded by enemy or backstabbed by those you thought are allies.
2. Gives chance to defenders, before fleets reached their destination in few turns and early game where making ship take few turns leaves no way of defending.
3. Heroes with movement abilites are now way higher in value, celestial enginesbeing the most powerful as where before it was a good bonus.
4. Engines are mandatory now, unless it is a system defending fleet.(am i the only one who has fleet to defend key systems?)

As much as i agree with destination AS took, restriction to only heroes was a bit to much. My suggestion would be:
Make fleet accelerators tied to support ships only and only 1 per support shipm also they are not amplified by ship size. As of now if you play vs AI having support ship is inefficient. AI rarely, if at all uses repair modules and taking their ships down FAST with fire power, rather than have tanks who repair themselfs every turn is better. That will increase support ships value.

B) Federation nerf is justified. It was best government type allowing to colonize tons of system. Althought i see why it was nerfed, i think it could have been executed other way. Buff weak gov. types. Currently dictatorship is worst type of all. It gives only x1.5 of senator skills on hero, compare it to having 2 heroes with senator skill it is worse and you have less laws, some might say it allows to force political party you want on which i agree, but when second selection starts most of the time empire already establishes their main policy (cravers invading systems, empire working on industry, vodyani leeching and etc.). Hissho heroes have senator skill to get extra behemoth and having 2 heroes with that ability might be a game changer which leads us to how weak dictatorship is. Democracy is a great, althought i rarely used it, found it to be amazing with all the options you get, federations we all know was and is still best, republic being weaker and more niche than previous 2.
What i suggest and i hope to see you suggestions on that
Buff other government types:
Dictatorship: buff numbers to representing senator effects. Possible additions a) double the trait power of assimilated faction b) give approval for some fidsi buffs. It is just thoughts outta my head, i am sure you will think of something better AS.
Democracy: good as it is .
Republic: buff numbers to law effects.
Federation: good as it is.

C) New CP system is great! Biggest fleets earlier, more tense fights.
D) Religion Saints & Sinners changes is ok. It was kinda exploit before. Abused by Vodyani, Riftborn and Cravers.
E) Vodyani need a change. YEAH i might be buyest, but they do not shine at anything. Industry is mastered by riftborn, hissho are the combatants, sophones are smart lizzards, they can not water their plants to grow'em and all lunch money is taken by lumeris, what do vodyani shine at? leeching? Leeching is their reproducing way for food pentalty it is not their power. They are worse at fidsi per pop so their pop bonus at 20 is 5% fidsi. ONLY 5! And movement bonus is great tho. What i am saying they have very pronounced weakneses and hardly any strong points. Personally i would love to see them as a fighters, but more cruel (with abduction/leeching intertwined with it).
Example: Essence can be used as keii to boost system (like a feasting festival of some sort), can be used on pilots, can be used on heroes.
Removing food growth system making it purely out of essence (like in vodyani rework mod). Why remove food? The more pops you have the more food they consume, while food pentalty grows, making it almost impossible to maintain systems with all sterille planets. Other factions can solve it by transporting pops that give food per strille or amebas. Vodyani can not do that and have food penalty.


Sorry i lost it again, just want to see the most powerful faction themticaly in game (and my favorite <3) to be strong and unique and so that uiqunies would not only be their weakness. Like for example riftborn, they can not reproduce normaly wwith food, which makes growth slower early, but also allows them to dish out several outposts at once as they do not depend on food. That is the perfect unique trait that has its strong and weak sides.

Hope you all have amazing day!

Neron wrote:

Make fleet accelerators tied to support ships only and only 1 per support shipm also they are not amplified by ship size. As of now if you play vs AI having support ship is inefficient. AI rarely, if at all uses repair modules and taking their ships down FAST with fire power, rather than have tanks who repair themselfs every turn is better. That will increase support ships value.

Personally I don't mind having super fast fleet whose speed is equivalent to 50 movement points, as long as they can't use that speed on free movement (movement outside the starlane).

You can find the implementations of what I mentioned above at here. (and I did similar thing in my mod)

B) Federation nerf is justified. It was best government type allowing to colonize tons of system. Althought i see why it was nerfed, i think it could have been executed other way. Buff weak gov. types. Currently dictatorship is worst type of all. It gives only x1.5 of senator skills on hero, compare it to having 2 heroes with senator skill it is worse and you have less laws, some might say it allows to force political party you want on which i agree, but when second selection starts most of the time empire already establishes their main policy (cravers invading systems, empire working on industry, vodyani leeching and etc.). Hissho heroes have senator skill to get extra behemoth and having 2 heroes with that ability might be a game changer which leads us to how weak dictatorship is. Democracy is a great, althought i rarely used it, found it to be amazing with all the options you get, federations we all know was and is still best, republic being weaker and more niche than previous 2.
What i suggest and i hope to see you suggestions on that
Buff other government types:
Dictatorship: buff numbers to representing senator effects. Possible additions a) double the trait power of assimilated faction b) give approval for some fidsi buffs. It is just thoughts outta my head, i am sure you will think of something better AS.
Democracy: good as it is .
Republic: buff numbers to law effects.
Federation: good as it is.

During the balance patch test, senator effect multiplier was buffed but it caused some serious bugs. So we should find the other way.

Currently I'm trying to make dictatorship more resilient to unhappiness & rebels by implementing the followings in my mod.

• The capital system of Dictatoral empire will alway have weight which is higher than 50% when calculating empire approval - in short, if your capital is happy, your empire approval will be maintained at decent level
• suppressing rebellion on system will have zero approval penalty (or maybe I could even give a small approval bonus) when your government is dictatorship - you can use suppress to stop rebellion provided you have enough manpower

Currently I'm trying to make dictatorship more resilient to unhappiness & rebels by implementing the followings in my mod.

• The capital system of Dictatoral empire will alway have weight which is higher than 50% when calculating empire approval - in short, if your capital is happy, your empire approval will be maintained at decent level
• suppressing rebellion on system will have zero approval penalty (or maybe I could even give a small approval bonus) when your government is dictatorship - you can use suppress to stop rebellion provided you have enough manpower

That sounds good. But approval problems are one of many for dictator ship. In resource and influence over gameplay they have the least amount. Other gov. types use min 2 diff political parties having their amazing benefits, like move speed froms science tree and fidsi bonus from ecology. While Dictator ship only gives 50% amount of senator skills. Maybe boost those numbers? Also how do you like my idea to double or at least x1.5 the strength of trait from assimilated minor factions (which only works when gov. type is dictatorship)

Neron wrote:

That sounds good. But approval problems are one of many for dictator ship. In resource and influence over gameplay they have the least amount. Other gov. types use min 2 diff political parties having their amazing benefits, like move speed froms science tree and fidsi bonus from ecology. While Dictator ship only gives 50% amount of senator skills. Maybe boost those numbers? Also how do you like my idea to double or at least x1.5 the strength of trait from assimilated minor factions (which only works when gov. type is dictatorship)

It could come in handy but its effectiveness would rely on RNG quite a lot. If there should be some kind of bonus for assimilating lots of minor factions, I'll prefer set of pre-made bonuses per assimilated minors (regardless of their actual effects).

By the way, is there any thematic or gamplay-wise reason for minor-related bonus on dictatorship?

By the way, is there any thematic or gamplay-wise reason for minor-related bonus on dictatorship?

What i thought of. Dictator forces(assimilates) factions into his empire using them as work power with ruthless efficiency.
Pure imagination, just thought of it as cravers slavery, but in dictatorship :P

Eh, federation is still god considering how extremely punishing overcolonization is combined with the inaccesability of luxuries even on high settings, there is just no other way.

Sure, rep can offset it with stronger approval bonuses, but it only takes you so far, not to mention 20k dust elections.

Rest is basically trash in the long run. Who get screwed? Gov-locked cravers.