Faction Concept: Wavedancers

tl;dr more aggressive version of the Unfallen that manipulates a single linear "celestial wave". I brought this over from the Steam forum after someone reminded me of this place.

Lore:

The Wavedancers originate from a planet that was subsumed by the Celestial Wave, a rogue creation of ths Endless. The heads of the wave are a pair of titans, and as they move the wave manifests in their wake, a trail of dust-charged water that exponentially widens as its length increases. For centuries the wave was contained to a single planet, but its properties created a nourishing environment and finally the Wavedancers are prepared to spread the Celestial Wave across the galaxy.

Gameplay:

Start on an ocean planet with two unique Titan ships instead of a colonizer. As the titans move they trace the two ends of the Celestial Wave (and thus they move extremely slowly). The Titans cannot backtrack, and you have to plan how you'll move the wave for several reasons. Wavedancer ships get movement and regen buffs while following the wave, allowing them to traverse their empire quickly but only along a certain path (gives outplay potential in PvP).

The waves are used to subsume and colonize planets/systems. The Titan can use the Subsume action on a planet, terraforming it into the new planet type Celestial Ocean (takes a number of turns based on planet type, ocean is instant while lava takes longer). Celestial Oceans connected to your wave are immediately colonizable. The other planets in the system can then be subsumed and colonized with system production, or the Titans can do it if they haven't left yet.

Celestial Oceans grant a FIDSI boost to Wavedancers (who are weak to make up for this) and grants a smaller bonus to factions who are at peace with Wavedancers (the ones who control that wave, if there are multiple in the same game). Similar penalty for factions you're at war with.

Celestial Oceans also grant a boost based on the angle formed by the wave that passes through it. Closer to 180° (straight line) gives a large boost to Science, Dust, and Influence, closer to 0° gives a bonus to system defense and resource generation, a middling angle gives a fraction of both but less in total the further the angle is from either extreme. This way you designate clear Producuction systems, and some (likely at the edges of your territory) will be Defensive systems or functional mining outposts.

The above bit seems complicated, so I'll elaborate. Since this faction basically terraforms everything, rather than planet types they're interested in finding geometric layouts that are advantageous to them. This is their main goal, like how Riftborn like to find good sterile systems. Lore reasoning is that the angle at which the wave passes the system determines the speed of the water-flow. Straighter angles mean a faster current, which carries more dust through the system and is beneficial to the infrastructure. Sharp angles mean the current has to violently rebound, and this displaced kinetic energy can be used to make the system harder to attack, and is also used to improve mining efforts. Since the Wave can be drawn independant of starlanes once you have that Baryonic tech, the player can take some extra time to execute this faction's power fantasy on an especially useful system.

You can subsume enemy or ally planets, which takes slightly longer so that they can attack your Titan if they want to. If the Titan is destroyed it becomes a wreck and has to be rescued/repaired, and since you can only ever have 2 of them that's basically mandatory.

Minor factions can only be assimilated once you've subsumed a planet in their system, whether or not they appreciate the terraforming beforehand could depend on their preferences... not sure how to implement that though.

Other factions have a terraform option to "mitigate the Celestial Wave" which removes its effects from planets and reverts them to their original type. The system remains connected to the Wave, and the Wavedancers can turn those planets back into Celestial Oceans from the production queue if they retake the system.

This faction seems like a good fit for the Religious ideology lore-wise, worshipping the Titans and trying to spread the Celestial Wave throughout the galaxy. The passive Religious law also synergizes with their playstyle of putting the Wave where they want to, regardless of borders or diplomacy if need be.

All other details I can think of are just exactly what you'd expect.

The Unfallen vines look amazing. Imagine how freaking awesome a single linear wave would look, cutting through the galaxy like a ribbon, with a lone elegant Titan ship at each head.