Hi, I am koxsos, and this is my balance offenders naughty list:
The nakalim and +10 inf per pop...

As I stated below the preview release notes, I am not quite satisfied with the fact, that we suddenly have an influence superpower in our midst converting planets into "unique planet levels of influence production"

I mean I get it, I really do, having the entire "faction affinity" revolve around cultural conversion, it would be a nice touch to give the faction a way to actually put some influence out there. It's not all bad. But given you are not at war, the pressure will be annoying on it's own. "Oh yeah, sucks to be you, but I have to dump my 1k influence a turn with ZERO prerequisites somewhere, so here is some buerocratic thing, now give me all your dust, or get FIDSI malus."
Not to mention some guy in a white fancy suit asking for influence handouts, would be a real gamebreaker, if one faction were to have ridiculous influence production on demand, right? Not like +10 speed on a fleet to sit on your home for 20 turns on normal combines that into a deathtrap.

Lumeris and their similarily "useful" affinity

But then we have other factions with "seemingly useless faction affinities" like Lumeris for instance, given you can buyout your first planet for a price of a starer colonizer buyout surely brings it own advantages, but then having an ability to "trade planets" because "no other empires at war could even think about doing that via truce /s" or going one better, "hey let me pay 5k for this outpost, and then ask you 250 dust for it, because that's how much an instant colonizer is actually worth to you".
I really love how the nakalim came out, with affinity to be instantly tagged as useless, it really shines light on things such as these. If you want to say "but buying planets is good enough" remember that "collecting relics and giving heroes/empire ridiculous output boosts besides science" is also good enough.

So, for the sake of not being completely useless trashtalking whino:

I suggest to tune the influence down to like 5 a pop AND limiting the temple to max per system.

I also suggest giving lumeris something nice to hold on to. Like workable trading companies, that are not so trash even AI does not bother (and then there is no one to trade with, not even in SP, I am so sad about that.)

The massive influence output, while breaking the game, also does not offer much in the way of dealing with the "but what if I declare war on you? HA! Checkmate!".

Thus I suggest the raze alternatives of:

Nakalim: give away the planet, provided it's in the sphere of influence. That prerequisite would be ridiculously easy under current +10 inf conditions, so don't just put this in.

Lumeris:  literally raze the planet, as in converting the resources to a new planet buyout (without penalties) OR give lumeris ability to "evacuate" planets without 100% ownership (for the same dust). Or sell off upgrades on the planet in place of pillaging action.

Hissho and the seemingly completely unadressed issue of stacking mining probes and ridiculous per pop planet outputs on home systems leading to turn 33 scientific victories

The fact that I can not see this adressed ANYWHERE in the notes makes it seem that either I am blind or there is no foreshadowing of another "kick hissho in the nuts" balance iteration on the way. Which of course makes the proud warriors stab each other, which they are fond of. I also did reproduce the "exploit/clever use of game mechanics" on the preview, so I really can't feel the fix hidden or not.

However if it was possible to slap them with +2 systems prior to overcolonization, and take away the exploitability of mining probes, perhaps by fixing a bug and putting them on shorter timer. It might make them and primarily their players happier.

Then I am not one to have my heart broken, that my 7 stacked behemoths 350% (50% each for the sake of quick maths) bonus, is hit by -25% malus, cause I need to own 5 other homes for ... SUPREMACY victory.
What really sucks there with the "hatched at home" feel is the time fleet takes to travel from point A to point B with base speed of 10, if you really invest in it.

PORTALS, I mean Vaulters
Consider making portals less "standardized build order for every system out there" and more "oh well, let's just build them, where they will still break the game, but at least I will be using only two, not 50" I mean you are heroically defending your crappy little empire, unless someone instantly colonized a neigbour system, bought out portal construction and brought over fleets from all over the galaxy to take a massive dump on you in 2 turns, fantastic. Your fleet also takes 2 turns to move from system to system, good for you given the skynet was disabled.

I am open to extremes such as:

portal = 1 colonized planet for the sake of overcolonization

portal travel for action point

health loss on portal travel

really anything to prevent this from happening

Riftborn stasis singularities

Endgame get's messy with those stasis singularities as someone posted. Locking out empires with 6 default colonization slots out of 6 systems is hella mean.

How would you like that to happen to you? What counterplay is there? Rush riftborn? How, they do have the most indy in the house...
It's surprisingly cheap to do too. (perhaps we could make it more expensive)

koxsos wrote:

Lumeris and their similarily "useful" affinity

But then we have other factions with "seemingly useless faction affinities" like Lumeris for instance, given you can buyout your first planet for a price of a starer colonizer buyout surely brings it own advantages, but then having an ability to "trade planets" because "no other empires at war could even thing about doing that via truce /s" or going one better, "hey let me pay 5k for this outpost, and then ask you 250 dust for it, because that's how much an instant colonizer is actually worth to you".
I really love how the nakalim came out, with affinity to be instantly tagged as useless, it really shines light on things such as these. If you want to say "but buying planets is good enough" remember that "collecting relics and giving heroes/empire ridiculous output boosts besides science" is also good enough.

Hissho and the seemingly completely unadressed issue of stacking mining probes and ridiculous per pop planet outputs on home systems leading to turn 33 scientific victories

The fact that I can not see this adressed ANYWHERE in the notes makes it seem that either I am blind or there is no foreshadowing of another "kick hissho in the nuts" balance iteration on the way. Which of course makes the proud warriors stab each other, which they are fond of. I also did reproduce the "exploit/clever use of game mechanics" on the preview, so I really can't feel the fix hidden or not.

However if it was possible to slap them with +2 systems prior to overcolonization, and take away the exploitability of mining probes, perhaps by fixing a bug and putting them on shorter timer. It might make them and primarily their players happier.

Then I am not one to have my heart broken, that my 7 stacked behemoths 350% (50% each for the sake of quick maths) bonus, is hit by -25% malus, cause I need to own 5 homes for ... SUPREMACY victory.

 The main point of planet broker is that you only need to press buyout button and the outpost appear. You can colonise anywhere w/o waiting for colony ship to reach it destination. That save a lot of turns on big maps. Also, dust diplomaty with minor faction lead to faster anexation . 

 Through the price for 10+ colony is kinda absurd. Not sure if it should scale so high, considering inflation stuff.

 The whole behemoth stacking thingy need a rework. 

1)multiple FIDSI shouldn`t stack on the orbit, its just dumb, same for scientific behemoths.

2)hero perk on extra behemoth should be removed.

3)mining probes are bonkers broken right now

Ptirodaktill wrote:

koxsos wrote:

Lumeris and their similarily "useful" affinity

I really love how the nakalim came out, with affinity to be instantly tagged as useless, it really shines light on things such as these. If you want to say "but buying planets is good enough" remember that "collecting relics and giving heroes/empire ridiculous output boosts besides science" is also good enough.

 The main point of planet broker is that you only need to press buyout button and the outpost appear. You can colonise anywhere w/o waiting for colony ship to reach it destination. That save a lot of turns on big maps. Also, dust diplomaty with minor faction lead to faster anexation . 

Through the price for 10+ colony is kinda absurd. Not sure if it should scale so high, considering inflation stuff.

"The main point of Nakalim are the relics, let's ignore the temples and leave them at the release level of uselessnes." See what I did there? I even called out this reply before you replied.

Ptirodaktill wrote:

 No, i don`t see what you did there =)  The ability to place outposts anywhere you want instatnly is quite strong if you think about it. It realy shine on some map setups with lots of distant constelations.

The ability to start with highest science output in the game, and continuously increase it regardless of system development is also quite strong if you think about it.

It really shines regardless of map setups. (preview makes sure you get enough relics through quests)

But then there is also an ability to instantly borrow out of said output pool to give heroes +40% fleet health and damage on demand.

That also shines in games where you like, fight with fleets, pretty common.
Let's just scrap temples, that's too strong together right?

Ptirodaktill wrote:

 Nou, man, you don`t get it. As Lumeris you can scout the other side of the map 

Cause nakalim do not start with 2 scouts and ability to actually move off starlanes from turn 1. Perhaps you can even scan some titanium, turn 1 titanium probes are really good for scouting.

, find that juicy voidstone planet and place a outpost on it.

I hardly ever see voidstones, is that the +4 indy per pop T2 luxury? That means you need to be at T4 science level to see it and have evaporation inhibitors to scan it. That means you probably already have wormholes. Thus movement is much less of an issue.

You would also need a population over 15 to make voidstone better than jadonyx, which is not too hard really, but it is a prerequisite. Or did they nerf it to only +40 now? I really find it hard to keep track without a wiki with such up to date info. Sorry.

 Then decolonise for almost no penalty once you mine enough to upgrade your forgeworld. 

Now, the food drain on a system, as long as you keep the outpost up (provided you needed the baryonic shielding to see and reach it) is not free, but yes, I would not care much for it either.

But you also might not be able to decolonize your 5 - 20k dust investment once someone intelligent puts a scout to block said system. But yes, doing these shenanigans is what you have to stoop to, to actually keep up.

Or you gain a quest from minor faction to colonise a nerby system on the other side of the map. Coloniser can reach it in 20 turns, Lumeris outpost would appear instantly. 

It's gain ownership, it means you also have to wait those X turns to turn it into a colony, right?

You can also gain a quest to take on that merc fleet, which will instead kill your scouts.

Or you can watch the faction go, as someone with high influence output, who did not have to spend their influence to buy new planets, has already taken the minor faction over.

Now back to the point, so we do completely neglect the fact that the faction affinity trait which is to be the "selling point" of the faction remains useless, and if we want to stay consistent, we should give the same treatment to nakalim aswell, or not?
To prevent further sidetracking of the post, here is a dicussion post to carry on.