So I'm sure almost everybody who plays this game has played with a custom faction. I would like to discuss my advent suggestion before pushing it towards the actual suggestion forum.



When you pick your affinity you're pretty much stuck with the avatar and ships of that particular race. It makes sense, but that custom class doesn't feel quite yours yet.

I present to you the idea of making custom emblems. Ta-dah...



Using a simple in-game emblem editor, using predesigned shapes and colors, players would be able to represent their custom faction with their own emblem. This emblem would then go on to replace that faction's portrait and diplomacy hologram. For the hologram part, the emblem can just be extruded slightly to build a 3D model and just rotate on its axis. Wouldn't that be nice?

Also in multiplayer I doubt it would take much to 'download' the other players' emblems since they are all made using in-game tools.



This feature will also make it easier to other features to implement. For example: using ships from another race/faction that differs from your current affinity. Since there's no avatar representing your affinity, it'll be easier to mix and match ships and affinities without making the game appear silly. Of course the affinity of that custom faction will be shown in the lobby or in the diplomacy screen just so that people don't forget what affinity their opponent is.



The only real risk to this is the production of very immature emblems (best example is Call of Duty: Black Ops). But I am not too worried about that because those brats probably don't know what a 4x game is, and most likely do not have the patience for it. We have a rather niche gaming community and because of that, I am inclined to believe that abusers will be sparse.



That is all.

I'm not sure about the emblem bit, but I agree that it would be nice if you could separately chose image (perhaps upload your own), ships and affinity, rather than for example selecting Sophon affinity and then being stuck with their image and ships....



However, I believe to have read somewhere that the Devs are aware of that and are looking into expanding the customisation options.

How about if they have a few dozen emblems of their making to be used during the custom faction creations. maybe even portraits and custom coloring for the ships. SotS did this well, as did GC2.



I am sure modders will end up doing this, but to have Amplitude have their approved ones would be fantastic.