So I have been playing since mid-alpha and have noticed a problem that has only gotten worse since the introduction of beta races. Its a problem people on the forums seem to dismiss or avoid. While I think no race is completely overpowered (Sowers are close though) I do believe some factions are very weak, specifically the UE, and especially early game. I have played over 100 hours of beta multiplayer (lot of free time what can I say) with UE and even when I get a lucky seed, i am still far behind the other factions early game(score of 100 to others 300-400), and it gets no better later. The one thing were supposedly good at, making dust trough taxes, is frankly a joke, especially with the new nerf. The dust techs don't offer nearly enough boosts per pop, they barley pay for themselves, like xenotourism for example. Properly tooled out, other factions (Sowers for example) can out Dust us by simply setting a couple of planets to Ind>Dust, I've seen games where i had 150 dust to their 800 or 900. In all my games I have never once been able to bring our tax rate up high enough to gain a benefit from the +Ind empire affinity. Unlike every other factions, UE doesn't seem to do anything well at all. Sophons have tech, Horatio have booming pops, Cravers spread like a plague, Amoebas are ultimate diplomats, Hissho are ton for ton the best fighters, Sowers are industrial power houses, and Pilgrims are excllent traders and all around sneaky space pirates. UE can tax people, which is bad in this game, it is always better to Ind>dust instead of raise taxes ever. UE bonus armor is also almost useless as the games combat system doesn't promote survivability, it promotes glass cannon destroyer swarms. Honestly UE is just weak all around compared to other factions, and by the time you get close to getting to use any of your affinity everyone is so far ahead its irrelevant. I have won with UE, that's not the point here though because I feel like its an achievement to win with UE. Playing the UE feels like playing the games "vanilla" faction. I know a lot of people will disagree, but UE have no real play style, their play style is "don't die". Remember folks this is all one mans opinion, Im not saying their unplayable but instead that they really have no play style other than surviving trough the game, nor real buffs at all to give them a focused style of play as a faction, resulting in them being very weak trough early and even late game.

The idea is that you figure out a way that you can up your taxes, and get both money *and* production. so getting heros with propaganda and planets with happiness boosts is the way to go. With the nice planets, you can make more money than another race would. Perhaps team up with a friendly Amoeba Real estate agent, they will be happy for the alliance, and you will be happy for the planets they tell you about!

I agree, with some of the neat traits the newer races have, the UE seem especially lacking.



UE's affinity trait is just not feasible with the current way taxes work. But even with a reworking of the tax system to make dust production much more appealing, I feel like the UE need another trait that pushes them more towards a certain playstyle... Something that makes you instantly think, "I'm definitely gonna take advantage of that", like the Sower's industrial boost and the Sophon's tech boost.



Anyways, I do believe I read somewhere that the devs will be making another pass over all the traits later in beta. We'll probly see UE's traits heavily reworked.

with their expansionist nature and quality ships it wouldn't be unthinkable that they may get less of expansion disapproval, you know cause that's what they like to do so they should be happier when they do.

or +5 approval on empire for each monopoly.

the issue is until late game its hard to have your tax rate high once you have all the morale improvements its fine but till then its not possible

The best thing about the UE is their dust production, which in the late game becomes very strong. They can crank out a ton of dust without using any conversions from industry to dust at all, and keep their systems pumping out starships. As you tech up, this dust gets plowed into your armada to upgrade it. It's a perfect war machine once it gets rolling, but it does take a while to get going.



So I don't think it's quite right to compare them to other factions like the Sowers who rely on conversions for dust -- the Sowers are terrible at generating dust otherwise, as a matter of fact. UE doesn't need to take their systems offline for conversions.



But the affinity itself is not very good -- very difficult to take advantage of it. They cannot handle the unhappiness resulting from jacking up the tax rate that high. Furthermore, they don't need to do this anyways. 50% dust and 40% tax rates in the late game or so gives you all the money you need without the unhappiness.

Yeah, the advent of "expansion disapproval" has completely dashed the UE's hopes of keeping their citizens happy enough raise taxes enough to make use of their trait. A much better trait would be +happiness on strat resource monopolies. Right now the fact that their specialty system upgrade increases strat resource sizes doesn't help anything. The luxury boost was nice, but strat monopolies mattering was better.



I find it MUCH easier to go for economic victory as the pilgrims, their +happiness allows them to expand and conquer like crazy, while their superb ability to trade with enemies generates ludicrous amounts of dust and research.

A large part of the problem with UE is that when you raise tax rates, it diminishes other FIDS. So really your shooting your self in the foot, you raise taxes to get more dust, but in the process lower your food, meaning less people to tax, meaning less taxes, Oh and the hit to industry and science is basically unacceptable.

I don't play multiplayer, but I have never felt threatened by a UE opponent. They have horrific expansion speed and no noticeable bonuses. The faction has no "teeth," so to speak.



I think the UE needs a few scary offensive traits to give other factions pause. Perhaps any UE ship/planet lowers the approval of all systems in sight radius by 1 per turn or something. We could call the trait "propaganda."

I agree. The production bonus is basically useless and their slow start (mineral poor home planet) does not help either.

Crismore wrote:
or +5 approval on empire for each monopoly.

I like this idea. It fits well with their expansion playstyle.

The mineral poor home planet is crippling in my opinion.

Seconding the +approval for strategic monopolies. That seems like a good fit for them.

yes. playing UE is very close to playing a faction with no traits at all.

they did change the +dust bonus but I'm not sure it really changes anything, either early or late game. the bonuses you get for high system/empire-approval make converting dust the best option in pretty much all cases. the insane amount of tech you'd need to be able to set taxes over 50% and not cripple your empire is staggering. the starting -10 approval anomaly on your homeworld is plain stupid too. that's another 5% of your tax setting out the window on turn 1 just to keep people content



early game the +hp trait might be a tiiiny bit useful but later on weapons do SO MUCH damage that anything getting past your defences will blow up your ship instantly regardless of hp. even a 27k hp dreadnought goes kaplooie within moments when a single destroyer can easily do 100k damage in a fight.... and you're not getting much more hp than that.



what else do they have? really nothing useful.



I applaud the suggestion of adding more + bonuses in some fashion. luxuries and tactical resources is a good idea but I feel they also need something that'll help early game. maybe... a +approval bonus right after colonization that decreases in power over time. I also like +approval per CP you blow up.

the real problem is that anything +approval will in practice just make it easier to get every single system at max approval for the bonus and only after that will would a player increase their slider. I feel the UE would be far better helped if they get get a bonus to the tax percentage itself. for example, you set the slider to 10% but you would actually be getting the money as if it were set at 30%. even in that case I'd still just keep the slider at 0 though :[ maybe the bonus for high approval is just too good.

All in all, I am convinced by the argument. UE needs to be revamped somewhat.



Frankly, I find the current traits to be a bit out of place with the whole theme of the aggressive, militaristic, despotic state. Illustrations show a lot of character, traits do not reflect it.

Yeah, the +hp is pretty worthless. A friend and I just ran some tests. Top end equipment, no combat cards, no admirals.



UE cruisers vs pilgrim BShips. The cruisers were stacked with X tons of min-maxed +health upgrades. The BShips were stacked with X tons of equally distributed defensive modules. The remaining modules between the two designs were identically distributed. I undertonned my ships to equal tonnage with the pilgrims to keep things even. We changed the X value around a couple of times, but the deflection/shield/flak fleet ALWAYS defeated the +health fleet.



I think +health MIGHT be viable for the UE for the short window where cruisers are the most powerful ships around and they unlock their reflective coating armor...but they're quickly outclassed by defensive modules.

In 0.45.2 they added UE : Dust bonus. The % bonus was too long to start and to give a Dust advantage to the UE. As Dust is their main trait, we want them to earn more Dust than the others, even at the beginning (+30% => +1 per pop on each planet)

I'm not really sure if I understand this correctly.

Helpfull, you think?

Why wouldn't you mix support/defensive modules since defensive modules generally beat weapons one from my understanding of other peoples' tests?



I would say that the UE have a handicap from their starting planet but it feels like people are grossly underestimating what +1 dust per person can do in terms of both the early game and late game especially with how retrofitting currently works.

I feel like because the UE aren't geared for any one strategy that they might come off as being weak, when really they are universally strong.

It's just the fact that they start off as mineral poor which is irritating to say the least. Though I might understand that it is necessary for balance since they gain a lot of speed come mid game, but early game feels like an exercise in frustration.