I've been playing Endless Space 2 for roughly 4 months. I realize that its not very long compared to others on here but figured I'd voice my opinion on what I'd like to see done with respect to the Custom Faction Editor.

1) One Pool of points based on Gameplay Affinity: Right now we have two pools of points: Faction Traits and Population. I propose to combine them and give the player the flexibility to allocate as much, or as little to his/her faction's abilities. Maybe you want a really strong population but to do so requires having few, if any, traits. Conversely, what if you don't care if your population is weak but want to squeeze as many points into your Faction's abilities as you can. You can only have a maximum of 8 Faction Traits to begin with so its not like we can go crazy on it. Yet the freedom to choose how we customize is the aim of this idea.

2) Explain Gameplay Affinities better: It would be incredibly helpful to list out all the "changes" or perks of each respective Gameplay Affinity. An example of this is Continuum Sculptors and how I would do it is below:

Continuum Sculptors:

Colony Bases do not produce Food

+150 Starting Dust

Colonization and Terraforming trees are reversed

Increased space on Sterile worlds

Create Singularities to affect systems within your field of vision.

It took me to making a custom Slave Drivers faction to discover it gave a perk of an additional Exploration Ship. Knowing what each Gameplay Affinity yields would be a huge help to all players.

3) Have Big Fleets add a starting Exploration Ship per stage: Namely Big Fleets I adds 1 Explorer Ship while Big Fleets II adds 2. To make this change requires removing it from Slave Drivers Gameplay Affinity but the net result of this is that it allows any custom faction with Big Fleets to start with more Exploration Ships. The Vanilla Craver faction would be buffed by this change.

4) Ignore Primary Government and Ideology in Custom Faction Point total: Everyone has to pick a starting Government and Political Ideology so why bother counting it against them in the point tree? Where you can count it against them is if they wish to "pick" additional ideologies within the Senate at game start. Obviously its incompatible with Dictatorship and Autocracy but if you were a Federation, Republic or Democracy, being able to choose starting political parties in the Senate would be quite powerful in the very early game as it dictates what laws are available to you.

5) Starting number of Planets, Size of Starting World and Type of Planet at game start: Right now we can only pick the Type of Planet at Game start. I'd like to see us being able to pick how many Planets are in our starting system(1-5, with 5 costing a premium over 4(which is standard). 3, 2 and 1 will be considered as a malus), the size of our starting Planet(default is Medium so Large and Huge will be a premium while Small and Tiny are considered a malus) and finally our starting Planet Type where Sterile and GAS Planet Types are added to the pool to choose from. Obviously when it comes to Sterile it should be limited to Desert(Nakalim start on it....) and Toxic(produces the most Food for a Sterile Planet). Gas Planets are simply a wish list but if they were added, they'd allow Colonization of Gas Planets from Game start, hence would require a hefty premium/price tag to use it. Yet you'd be limited to a maximum of 2-3 slots until the mid-late game so it might not be the best starting option.

6) Involuntary Nomads trait ignores Starting Planet cost: The Involuntary Nomad trait causes you to start on a Rejuvenation Field as opposed to a system. Therefore having to pay for Involuntary Nomads(which is a Faction Trait and 10 points) in addition to Starting Planet(which is a minimum of 5 points) is a costly trait for something that relies on RNG for strength of start. Furthermore, if my previous idea is implemented, it'd ignore Planet Size and number of Planets since again its RNG.

7) Improve Kinetic Accuracy: Kinetic Weapons, particularly Kinetic Slugs, are abhorent at Long Range and Torpedoes are prone to overkill compared to Energy Weapons. Kinetic Slugs should at minimum, mirror Torpedoes or 25% at Long Range(up from 10%), 50% at Medium Range(same) and 100% at Short Range(up from 85%). While not ideal at attacking adjacent lanes, it would give players who opt for Short Range tactics to benefit from them(particularly if they have Cloaked Ships).

8) Eliminate EMP Weapons: EMP Weapons give a huge advantage to Energy based variants since the EMP Beam disables the module meant to counter it in Shield Generators. Furthermore, the counter to EMP Weapons is blatantly worthless and installing them is a waste of a Utility Slot.

9) Add Custom Faction Trait that alters Law Capacity: Pretty simple idea: Increase Law Slot by 1 or reduce it by 1 if opted to be a malus. Obviously this trait would be useless in a Democracy since you're capped at 6 laws but in the other 4 Governments, you can have a maximum of 5 laws(6 in an Autocracy), making it an incredibly powerful trait for Republics. Conversely, it can be a viable malus since it'd limit you to just the base law for all but Autocracy/Democracy at game start.

10) Allow us to pick our Hero Represenatives in Senate: When playing as a faction, you might get 2 Heroes from the same Political Ideology. How the game picks and chooses who represents you in the Senate I'll never know but I find that having the ability to pick your Senate Represenative(and accordingly their Senate skills) would be a welcome addition. Especially if you're in a Dictatorship/Autocracy where their Senate Skills are amplified.

More ideas to come as I think of them.

Daynen wrote:

1: I could see this being an issue simply because the population traits NEED to be separate.  If we combined this pool of points people would minmax the HELL out of things by just not selecting any pop traits and grabbing the biggest faction traits possible.  Of course, it may just be more interesting that way anyway, so who knows?

2: Yes.  There's no point in keeping the mystery alive when it comes to what affinities actually grant you.

3: Dunno.  Do Cravers really need a buff?

4: Yes. All government types and ideologies cost exactly the same points and you have to select one of each, so why do they even HAVE a point cost at all?  The possibility of starting with a mixed ideology is intriguing.

5: This one I like.  It's one more tuning lever we can pull.

6: This one makes a lot of sense; nomads don't HAVE a planet, so why are they paying the cost for one?

7: Not sure about this one.  The point of missiles is to kill as hard as possible before other weapons get in range.  Potential overkill is the price we pay for that benefit and low accuracy at range is the price for weapons with high rate of fire.

8: Never really used EMP stuff much, nor really faced it.  Can't comment on this one.

9: Interesting idea.

10: I THINK your highest level hero in an ideology is your senate representative, but I could be entirely wrong on this one.

If we adopted idea#1, Vanilla Factions could be buffed significantly since their population traits are generally weak(with a few exceptions like Unfallen(+7 Food on Fertile), Rifborn(Adept Workers) and Cravers(x2.5 yield on undepleted....). Horatio are unique in that their population is enhanced thanks to their Gameplay Affinity so they're the oddball one). It'd also allow players the freedom to pick and choose what elements to have in their faction as opposed to being locked into allocating 60 points to Population and 95/100 towards Faction Traits. I mean I could squeeze an extra 5-10 Faction points if I could take them from Population. Conversely, I could squeeze 5-10 more points into Poulation since i often like having Anti-Ideology traits but cant because they cost 10 points.

As for #3, I'm simply taking the bonus Exploration Ship from Slave Drivers and applying it to Big Fleets Faction trait. That way any custom faction with Big Fleets would gain that bonus. Consequently, Cravers would gain two Exploration Ships as opposed to the one from Slave Drivers.

My thinking about #7 was to give Kinetic fleets more options in battle. Right now Kintetic basically has to occupy all 3 Floatillas to maximize Kinetic Slug Accuracy. Energy fleets don't necessarily have to do so since Lasers are 5 times more accurate. Mirroring Kintetic Slugs with Torpedoes would drop the difference to x2.

#8 is really noticeable... just look at it. As for #10, I had a level 24 Dmitri Lenko on my Senate but had a level 29 Industrial Craver Hero as a Governor pumping out things left and right thanks to his unique Craver ability on system(had Economic Behemoths in orbit replenishing the system). Dmitri was my representative over the Craver hero so its obviously not based on Hero level from the looks of it.

I'm back with more ideas that should be treated with a grain of salt but ought to be considered in a future patch.

#11 Overhaul Riftborn: Right now, Riftborn's Gameplay Affinity is incompatible with any Visual Affinity besides its own from a custom faction standpoint. This is due to the change to the Colony Base(which removes its Food production) in Continuum Sculptors that doesn't harm Riftborn population since they ignore Food altogether in the current Visual Affinity setup. As such I think the following changes are in order:

Continuum Sculptors grants the ability to apply Time/Space bubbles on systems once the appropriate price in Dust/Strategics and "turns"(must be built in a system's production queue) have been paid. The unique techs associated with the warp bubbles are tied to this Gameplay Affinity. Frankly this ought to apply to all Gameplay Affinities(ex: Genetic Recoding Tech is tied to Gene Hunter Affinity for example).

Riftborn Visual Affinity grants unique improvements(such as Isolation Cells, Burrows and other Riftborn associated changes like Riftborn Miners Corp(+3 Strategic instead of +2 on Mechsuit Quarter that it replaces)), ships, quest line and heroes. Again changes to improvements should be tied to their respective Visual Affinity(so for example the Sophons get Cold Planet buffs on select system improvements).

Everything else associated with Riftborn are then transferred as new Faction Traits:

Dust III <- Grants 150 additional Dust at game start. Each stage costs 5 Faction points(15 points total) and grants +50 Dust per stage

Voidborne <- Population does not require Food but must be manufactured in system build queue. Costs 15 points

Reversed Engineering <- Colinization and Terraforming trees are reversed. Costs 25 points.

Sterilization <- Colony Bases produce no Food Costs -15 points

As of right now, Riftborn are the only faction that starts with 250 Dust(that's huge imo). Why can't custom factions have that same starting modifier? By removing the robotic population from the visual as a new faction trait, new custom factions can be created under different visuals. Then with Reversed Engineering, being able to colonize on Sterile worlds from the start would be awesome for custom factions that didn't utilize Continuum Sculptors Gameplay Affinity. All told it'd take 50 points(with Biophobic, although balance changes could push the cost higher) to obtain Riftborn's ability to colonize at will under a different Gameplay Affinity. Finally Sterilization or the change to the Colony Base is considered a "malus" but isn't really a malus if you're Voidborne.

#12 Living in Luxury starting modifier: Right now we can give our custom factions a starting anomaly(good or bad) and starting sources of Titanium and/or Hyperium but no means of giving our starting planet a Tier 1 Luxury Resource. What Luxury Resource that happens to be is determined by RNG(and what luxury spawns in your sector) but it would certainly be nice to have another starting modifier at our disposal. This starting modifier would have two tiers/stages. First tier costs 10 points and spawns one Luxury Resource while tier two would cost 25 points and spawn two Tier 1 Luxury Resources(again what spawns in your sector). Doing this would give players the option to give their custom faction an incredibly strong start and perhaps overcome the issues plaguing the Continuum Sculptors Gameplay Affinity.

#13 Increase Autocracy/Dictatorship buff on Senate Hero skills: Right now the buff is x1.5 so for example Titan of Industry grants +.5% per Hero level. Under Autocratic governments, it goes to +.75% per Hero level. I propose that Hero Senate skills be buffed to x2. You're locked to one Hero to begin with and Senate skills aren't always super powerful so increasing it to x2 doesn't feel like that big of a change.