nosavynada wrote:
I tried the Eternal and Blockade combo and no trade period without peace.

It definitely works, assuming that your systems are the most effective trade route for the other faction (and subject to available trade routes in other factions). Here's the save file:
Blockade Breakers, Merchants, and Eternal War.zip

Things that are poorly valued:



These cost too much, meaning their negatives are probably too good. They could probably all be half their current cost without much impact on game.

All techs

Hero Healing

Hero Dust Use

Ship health

Frontier size

Ship Sensors?

System Defense

Terraformed planet



These cost too little, but it is actually a much smaller effect than the above. The extra points from negatives is the real killer.

Blockade Breaker

Ship Weight

Ship damage?

Additional approval.

Here what I would like to see added on to Custom Factions:



Avaliablitiy to choose your own homeplanet without having to choose a certain affinity

Choose my pictures for the faction that I'm creating

Choose what kind of ship design I want to use



I'd also like to see:



A Guard class ship; a ship but that would be considered one of the present classes (like the Corvette, Battleship, etc.) thatwould have permanent attribute on it (such as one free ion tornado) that costs nothing

The happiness of a system not just being affected by the planets, but also if they are winning or lossing battles in a present conflict or blockaded

Government for the factions UE-Tyrannical Dictatorship, Hissho-A Senate of uncooperative tribes, Cravers-A heretical Queen, etc.

*I'd also like see the leaders themselves as well

Different backgrounds during the battle phases

Choose formations for the fleets before the battle like line of stern(s) or a formation with heavy ships in the middle and lighter ships on the outside



Open for comments and what would like to see done?

+12 Merchants 2 (+2 trade routes on all systems)

Is it really 2 trade routes on all systems ? It seemed to me it was only on the main system, can someone give me any info about this ?

While this special rush build KnightRider mentioned may work very well in the games you play, this is something which is much harder to balance as it really profits as a “build” where everything works hand in hand, but it also only works that well in special conditions. On huge maps with tons of players you might have a harder time for example. Much like a rush/cheese tactic in an 1v1 match in sc2.



But I think there are other things which are much more obvious and need to be rebalanced.



Some things are just too powerful for the points, like the science bonus and of course the malus for the same thing is therefore not worth taking.



And it’s exactly the same thing with the planet anomalies, just in the opposite direction. These are free points without much of a loss. But that, at the same time makes the bonus anomalies extremely weak.



I’d love to see a much bigger diversity in points here. The 30% bonus things could cost twice as much, and the anomalies and technologies could be worth half as many points. Or maybe even less. That would also make it easier to actually spend all your points instead of looking for some sort of combination to be able to spend your last point.



I saw that there is also a suggestion thread over there: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12044-suggestion-please-revise-the-point-system-for-custom-races



Maybe it's better to continue there.

Necro- wrote:
can you elaborate? i've considered all the planet ones pretty worthelss (imho the positives are far too expensive)

Simply because your starting planet's traits are meaningless. Unless they reduced a planet to 0 in one category how do they hurt you.

The negative one give you free points (a few) while they do not really hurt you that much (afte rall its just 1 Planet and the Negative Anomaly can even be removed later in game...)

Shivetya wrote:
Well the starting planet negatives are insanely worthwhile.



Still, the empire wide effects are just to cheap. They should be a defining trait of a race and then only one. Like the 30% bonus items - make it so you can really only afford one and even then with some substantial negatives. Right now it is too easy to make/play god races.

can you elaborate? i've considered all the planet ones pretty worthelss (imho the positives are far too expensive)

Generic rush race:



Sheredyn / UE Affinity

Legendary heroes 2/2 <- Level3 industry leader from turn2

Militarists

Snipers

Big guns

Rich home world

Merchants

... add which you like



Will rush 2-3 non-rushing players with glass cannon destroyers by turn 15-30, has ended all the games I've been in by turn 30 in a tremendous whinefest.

Well the starting planet negatives are insanely worthwhile.



Still, the empire wide effects are just to cheap. They should be a defining trait of a race and then only one. Like the 30% bonus items - make it so you can really only afford one and even then with some substantial negatives. Right now it is too easy to make/play god races.

I have a own created faction I doing very good with against normal AI. Any one know how to share it with you here?

I got it down to 656b zipfile

or you can create an empty empire faction and save it. And use this in the end of the created xml file that now resides besides endless space saves in documents.



AffinityEmperor TraitAlignmentEvil;TraitHero03Norm2;TraitHero01Norm2;TraitFleet07Norm2;TraitEconomy07Norm1;TraitEconomy02Norm1;TraitPopulation04Norm1;TraitSpaceBattle07Norm1;TraitScience01Norm1;TraitDefense02Alt1;TraitDefense01Alt2;TraitAnomaly01Norm1

have fun(I have)

davea wrote:
Does blockade breakers actually mean that you never need peace? So then you would have trade routes with all empires, except ones you have not met or ones you are at war with. This seems very powerful!

Yes, that's it. Blockade breakers should have a really higher cost.

But eternal war isn't that good. After all peace and cooperation agreement can give a huuuuge boost.

dlcooper wrote:
The devs aren't going to be able to balance the game for all possible combinations in the custom factions. I'm sure it's possible to create overpowered factions. As for the custom pictures and ship design, I'm sure something like that will probably be coming.

They should be able to with time. There will still likely be favored combinations however.

I just played my first game on hard with a custom faction (not finished yet), but I have to say that the pros and cons seem to be quite imbalanced.



Why are all the starting techs (10-15 Points) and planet modifications (5-10 Points) so extremely expensive? And why is +30% Science and +30% production (both 30 points) so extremely cheap?



I created a Sophon based faction with

+30% science, +30% production, Crowded (+2tiny,+2small,+1medium)

+50% dust cost for heroes, +50% healing cost for heroes



So I am just flashing through the tech tree and everything is built so fast, that there is just no other way than building tons of ship during the "waiting times", which are extremely powerful by a side-effect of the high science.



Compared to the "real" sophon faction which I played before that's kind of absurd.



Well, of course people can say "then don't play custom factions" but I'd rather like some big changes in the costs here.



In addition I would have liked to use pictures from Heroes, chose a ship design myself and also change the tech tree benefits myself.



Which experience did others make so far with custom factions?

Kreios wrote:
As long as custom factions exist, there will always be the possibility of a small handful of overall best factions rising to the top of the heap. The trick is to constantly try to break the system so that subsequent rebalancing work can reduce the disparity between the best builds and the rest (which also tends to cause turnover in the best builds).



Take this combination, for example:



-10 Eternal War (no peace)

+ 6 Blockade Breakers (trade routes do not require peace)

+12 Merchants 2 (+2 trade routes on all systems)



Unless I missed something vital, that looks like a net +8 points I'll put into every single race I build until the devs tinker with the race customization.

I tried the Eternal and Blockade combo and no trade period without peace.

The costs of things seem a bit whacked to me.



Like say it costs 10 start with 1 tech or 10 for a nice gamewide perk.



The techs seem valued way too highly. There's almost no point in starting with the tech since you can't use it early and researching it is no big deal. Compared to say, 10% extra prod/sci/dust/pop.



I made a custom race with sophon's, dropped the starting techs (sci race is going to research fast anyways), and added a bunch of other sexy traits to make a seemingly ridiculously overpowered civ.



Techs should be valued at about 1/3 to 1/4 what they are now and the total number of points to work with should be lower so that if you ditch starting techs it doesn't give you so much room for multiple additional huge traits.

davea wrote:
Does blockade breakers actually mean that you never need peace? So then you would have trade routes with all empires, except ones you have not met or ones you are at war with. This seems very powerful!

I'm using that custom combo right now, and I have three trade routes up and running. Blockade Breakers explicitly states that neither Cold War nor War breaks the trade routes, so all you need it contact with the other factions. As a test, I just declared war on all of the AIs and ended my turn; I kept my trade routes, so it looks like the combo works as described. Crazy, huh? O_o

nachtnebel wrote:
Well, most 4X games are not really balanced around their custom factions, that's just not necessary. If you want a balanced multiplayer game just stick with the basic factions, custom factions on the other side are a good choice if you want to try something special or, if you create real bad ones, if you want an additional challenge for your singleplayer games.

True, but it's possible, and wonderful when developed properly. There was an ancient little 4X game called Stars!, whose custom race designer was more detailed overall than ES, and it worked very well. It did have some funny break-points in the math in a couple of cases, but the gains didn't significantly affect race design ("Oh no, the cost to raise my race's growth rate from 19% to 20% is huge compared to the cost to raise it from 18% to 19%.")



Use custom races as often as you can, especially in multiplayer, and provide detailed feedback to the devs regarding both your own race's performance and those of the other players. Your feedback will drive proper balancing.

Well, most 4X games are not really balanced around their custom factions, that's just not necessary. If you want a balanced multiplayer game just stick with the basic factions, custom factions on the other side are a good choice if you want to try something special or, if you create real bad ones, if you want an additional challenge for your singleplayer games.

Kreios wrote:
-10 Eternal War (no peace)

+ 6 Blockade Breakers (trade routes do not require peace)

+12 Merchants 2 (+2 trade routes on all systems)

Does blockade breakers actually mean that you never need peace? So then you would have trade routes with all empires, except ones you have not met or ones you are at war with. This seems very powerful!



Unless I missed something vital, that looks like a net +8 points I'll put into every single race I build until the devs tinker with the race customization.[/QUOTE]

Its only just been released, these sorts of threads will help the devs balance it more.