Is it intended for these affinities to have 5 less points to work with in custom creation? I don't consider any of these affinities to be more valuable than affinities like Horatio or Cravers.

I understand Amoeba and Sowers... they're very useful affinities... but personally, I have never used the Pilgrims' affinity ability. Which is a shame, because they're my favourite race asthetically. I think the Pilgrims' affinity ability is over-priced.

The Pilgriim's affinity is very powerful if used for rapid expansion.



I do think that the custom design system needs some adjustment -- the custom races should get as many points as the stock races, unless there's some good reason why not that I'm not aware of.

Theodotus wrote:
The Pilgriim's affinity is very powerful if used for rapid expansion.



I do think that the custom design system needs some adjustment -- the custom races should get as many points as the stock races, unless there's some good reason why not that I'm not aware of.

The stock races are not min-maxed, they are tuned to have unique playstyles and be balanced with each other. In order to even remotely balance them with a min-maxed custom race the custom race can not have as many points.

You can easily build a custom race that is far more powerful than any of the fairly balanced stock races. If you add up the points for points for a stock race, it exceeds what you can do if you tried to duplicate it as a custom race (not that you would). The custom race builder needs some tuning -- like there is little reason to spend 10+ points on an initial tech (a few games in turn) when those points could be placed in something that benefits your entire empire. Same typically goes for starting planet conditions, points spent on one planet in one system versus something that could effect the whole empire for the entire duration of the game.

The starting conditions of your empire are very important, a bad start escalates out forever, one turn here and there can lead to an opponent having a 50 turn lead over you.

Edited the title.

Milaha wrote:
The stock races are not min-maxed, they are tuned to have unique playstyles and be balanced with each other. In order to even remotely balance them with a min-maxed custom race the custom race can not have as many points.

Having now designed an offshoot of the Pilgrims, I see what you mean. My custom version should be much more powerful. (Haven't had time to play it yet, so making an educated guess.)

Yeah, similarly my sophon/sowers hybrid is very powerful as well (plays significantly faster than either the sowers or sophon)

teruokun wrote:
Yeah, similarly my sophon/sowers hybrid is very powerful as well (plays significantly faster than either the sowers or sophon)

Oh hell... something with tolerant and science/movement bonuses must be monstrous.



TBH, the only custom faction I've done so far is a copycat of someone else in the forums: The Encyclopedia Foundation, as envisioned by Isaac Asimov. (You can even sort of shoehorn it into the lore, too...)

I haven't played around with it yet, and need to tweak how screwed they are in the early game (if you've read the stories you'll know what I mean) but I expect blockade breakers combined with +1 trade routes everywhere to be ... interesting.

the biggest changes i'd like to see is de-coupling affinity, art and ship style and race-specific tech trees from one another (eg being able to make a species with amoeba ships, but using sophos unique tech and sower affinity). As well as certain traits need to be toned down (eg. 10 per research is far far too much)

Selecting your starting planet type would be very nice too. Of course there should be prices to them because some planet-types just are superior.



Also the Tolerant -trait has some funny drawbacks because you cannot choose the starting planet: if you try to design a Sowers-like faction, Tolerant actually costs 50 points (and that's just way too much). Sowers affinity always has a tundra starting planet. Without Tolerant it works just fine, but with the Tolerant trait and without Xenobotany your homeworld has 50-25% FIDS malus. It cripples the start so bad, if you want to make modified Sowers you need to spend ~83% of your budget on one trait.

Discussion if Tolerant is overpriced or just fine is another topic, but I'd like to have it without forced technology purchases. Possible solutions to the Sowers affinity only problem: choose starting planet type, cheaper technologies and/or homeworld immune to tolerant malus.

OP the problem with that is almost every Human player is going to go at least from 0/60 to -15/60 before taking the traits they want. Personally I always take the following "drawbacks" on every custom faction I make. These simply do not interfere with strategy I'm ever going to employ. That's why custom factions get fewer points.



Feeble Warriors 2/2

Sloppy Sawbones 2/2

Isolationist 1/1

Dust Impaired 2/2

Taelon wrote:
You can easily build a custom race that is far more powerful than any of the fairly balanced stock races. If you add up the points for points for a stock race, it exceeds what you can do if you tried to duplicate it as a custom race (not that you would). The custom race builder needs some tuning -- like there is little reason to spend 10+ points on an initial tech (a few games in turn) when those points could be placed in something that benefits your entire empire. Same typically goes for starting planet conditions, points spent on one planet in one system versus something that could effect the whole empire for the entire duration of the game.

I have noticed how handy it is for your homeworld to have things like a dust node or extra researching or production capabilities, it helps get your homeworld and the other planets in the same system ready to begin your expansion, though i do agree with you about the whole technology thing.



While i always put in negative trading traits, since 90% of the time, the alien races tend to just outright attack me from the moment i meet them, so i never get the chance to trade with them.



Also, the technologies to terraform planets to specific types should be grouped into a single tech called terraforming, like Masters of ORion 2, you went all the way to Terran Class worlds and got gaia transformation to get to the best world type, i remember one game where i wanted to make sure all my worlds were terran types and i had gained nearly 100% of the galaxy, only the homeworld of a single race was left and there was not a single resource that allowed me to convert my planets into terran, which i thought was strange to say the least.

JamieK81 wrote:
I have noticed how handy it is for your homeworld to have things like a dust node or extra researching or production capabilities, it helps get your homeworld and the other planets in the same system ready to begin your expansion, though i do agree with you about the whole technology thing.



While i always put in negative trading traits, since 90% of the time, the alien races tend to just outright attack me from the moment i meet them, so i never get the chance to trade with them.



Also, the technologies to terraform planets to specific types should be grouped into a single tech called terraforming, like Masters of ORion 2, you went all the way to Terran Class worlds and got gaia transformation to get to the best world type, i remember one game where i wanted to make sure all my worlds were terran types and i had gained nearly 100% of the galaxy, only the homeworld of a single race was left and there was not a single resource that allowed me to convert my planets into terran, which i thought was strange to say the least.

I think the intention with terraforming in Endless Space is not to give you very useful planets, but to simply be able to change the particularly bad planet types into something decent. Of course, how good or bad each planet type is, is pretty situational but...

Well terrain-ocean-jungle worlds have the best FIDS overall, but by the time you get them, they are usally used to overcome stalemates, because when you can start terraforming it is usually better to not waste time and just carry on.