Just tossing my own idea out there, but it'd be really cool to discover a race still really early in its development (Pre-spaceflight) with a nice system. The player could either crush them and take the system, leave them alone, or even help them develop. If developed, at a random point in the game, they'll become an Ally who totally worships your own group, making them useful but risky.

Romeo wrote:
Just tossing my own idea out there, but it'd be really cool to discover a race still really early in its development (Pre-spaceflight) with a nice system. The player could either crush them and take the system, leave them alone, or even help them develop. If developed, at a random point in the game, they'll become an Ally who totally worships your own group, making them useful but risky.

That's straight up uplifting. I like it.

Igncom1 wrote:


No need to add some half-assed new species for every minor faction, lots of 4X games do it and its pointless, they have no reason for being and no connection to anything.

oO oO oO O.O



But........ more funny looking aliens to conquer = good aliens.......



(basically, my foreign policy in Endless space is to play as UE, make one token ally, and go to war with everyone else.)

In reply to myself, here are some concepts I was brainstorming. Could possibly be more resource friendly, but, alas, scumbag brain.



And one point I left out before: The inclusion of sub-races should make the game more re-playable! An integral part of what makes Endless Space "Endless".



At any rate, my ideas:

3 minor races, each bound to one starting system, pre-designed to give them the resources they need to operate at optimal efficiency and therefor not simply flounder and die. Tech tree also has some technologies unlocked to begin with: you can't storm said system and make off with a ship building utopia to boot.

Anyway, I say 3 races because this allows for "good", "evil" and "neutral", which rings of good balance in terms of the big picture and is much easier to pull off than designing 16 of them. The mechanics I'm about to suggest are more my personal fancy than anything else, but you might enjoy them as well:



Evil: "The Mercenaries"

- System geared towards ship production. Not outwardly aggressive, and not always producing ships.

- Alien races open a diplomatic dialog with them, select another race they want to have attacked, and then propose an amount of dust for said war to be declared. If the mercenaries find it acceptable, it's off to war they go!

- Of course, if they attack you, you can bribe them to stop. Then the original financier can bribe them to continue. Then it becomes a bidding war.

- To save on resources, re-skinned pirates. Add a new insignia a viola. (Cheaper than new concepts and models).

- If system razing is eventually implemented, perhaps you can bribe them to attempt such?

- Only 2 ship designs: "Raider", an attack vehicle, and "Destructor", a system destruction utility vehicle.

- So, we have proxy wars, increased utility for dust, and a dangerous new concern. Sounds pretty cool to me. This is one of my favorite ideas.



Neutral: "Merchants and Spies"

- Eager to become your friend, but beware...

- Doing business with the Merchants is a double edged sword. Although you'll see your trade routes blossom if you co-operate with them, you'll start to notice "drone ships" located in your systems. These are draining science and dust production (As in, the way an adventurer hero does).

- One needs to carefully evaluate if their trade routes and the bonuses therein are outproducing the amount stolen by spies.

- Two ships needed: Guardian and Drone Ship. Drone already explained. Guardian naturally defends the home system. The Merchants will not interfere when two races declare war, even if they are allies with one.



Good: "Peaceful"

- As in, Ghandi peaceful, not US peaceful, as someone else on the forums put it once...

- Reward peaceful play with buffs.

- Refuse to associate with those civilizations who've recently declared war.

- If possible, will lend post defenders to try and save the systems of friends being attacked. Will never help offensively.

- Two ships: "System Buffer" to apply said benefit and a "Defender", to protect the home system and help friends.



These ideas need to be expounded upon. In an ideal world these races would be well equipped to survive into the late game in order to make that more interesting, as people have often been complaining that later on things get a tad boring (which I have to agree, towards the "end" my civilizations spam science, gets boring).



More/better ideas needed!

One can dream.



*In retrospect my ideas should be simplified a tad. The great thing about Endless Space is that it's so intuitive... Minor races shouldn't disrupt that and mine look a wee bit complex.

Why not just non-expansive versions of the empires already in game?

A possibility.

A boring, dry, defeats the purpose of attempting to expand the universe and enhance variety of game play possibility.

The objective is to make things more interesting, add replay-ability, etc. A re-skinned Sower confined to a single system isn't intriguing or adding strategic possibilities.

I'm in. Great idea. I love having lots of various races in the system.

mhstierney wrote:
A possibility.

A boring, dry, defeats the purpose of attempting to expand the universe and enhance variety of game play possibility.

The objective is to make things more interesting, add replay-ability, etc. A re-skinned Sower confined to a single system isn't intriguing or adding strategic possibilities.

Re-skinned, re-lored and possibly over several systems, a deviant group of sowers who are working towards a more peaceful solution to their problems.



There Lore possibility's with the faction themselves for multiple factions, like UE barons or different Craver swarms.



No need to add some half-assed new species for every minor faction, lots of 4X games do it and its pointless, they have no reason for being and no connection to anything.

I believe we're talking about two totally different things. I believe you'd like to make sub-factions or new ones (and a new thread for that topic, as it deserves discussion) or something very nearly of the sort.

If it's swarming about the place, owns several systems, etc, it isn't so much a minor race as the predecessors of Endless Space would have us understand. Think Gal Civ 2.

I like this idea, it is a good way to make the galaxy less stagnant.

I would support this idea. But minor races would recommend some new programming, since they don't act the same way, the big factions are programmed to. Otherwise you could just design your own faction and let it play as AI (not possible right now I think). But with some additional prorgamming there could be minor factions (looking to the modders).



But such minor races should have a purpose or a deep impact on the game, since just having them as some battle booster, just there to further stop conquering the galaxy would be just boring. As you mentioned above, there should be some purpose.

Your Ideas are good, but I would love to see more minor races then just three!



But first one thing that could be improved right from the game: the "natives" anomalies, good or bad are a nice addition but with little impact on the game. Those Aliens are received as Numbers and Letters by the player and thus not very interesting. To have some more information of random little storys (and pictures) would be awesome and improve the fun with the fluff.



Additional ideas on the "minor races" would be:



Asking you for help as their "big brother" to trade and fight for them, helping with population and colonizing planets. They could ask for goods with pop ups and helping them would improve your Diplomatic stats (another way to boost diplomacy and an alternative to win the game faster with it!). There should be absolutely good reasons not just to invade and exterminate them, since they help much in late and mid game.

mhstierney wrote:
I believe we're talking about two totally different things. I believe you'd like to make sub-factions or new ones (and a new thread for that topic, as it deserves discussion) or something very nearly of the sort.

If it's swarming about the place, owns several systems, etc, it isn't so much a minor race as the predecessors of Endless Space would have us understand. Think Gal Civ 2.

Yes because a space fairing race that hasten expanded or attempts to expand makes sense.



What I am taking about is non-expansive small empires of the already established species, not one system entirely new races that don't even matter and players wont care about, so why bother?



They wont matter, they won't be effective and are nothing but a stepping stone for the Hissho, they don't have enough land to be a problem or to provide a benefit other then some artificial 'boost' that would be stupid and unnatural to the game as the player can't achieve the same with the same resources.



Small empires to attack, trade with or engulf would be fun as they would represent real problem to be resolved before you can compete with the other major empires.

I agree with Igncom1 that as a stepstone they would be good, too.



But that to be their only purpose would just bore me. Those little empires would be far more tempting as something to improve your own empire, by somehow assimilating it. Since they are too small to be a real threat to the galaxy and know that, they wouldn't be interested in fighting against you. So you would have the choice to either assimilate or crush them, making assimilation the more stressfull and expensive, but for the endgame even more promising decision.



They should however not have any kind of areaeffect or influence-radius, since that would thwart your own expansion. With that it could even be possible to colonize a Planet in their system, making trade and diplomacy more promissing?

Minor races really need to introduction for anyone who's been a long term fan of the 4x genre. For everyone else, basically they're a faction which has limited influence on galaxy as a whole, but which can operate in a limited area and therein "complicate" things by making the player adapt to their presence. They might provide a foe to combat if the 8 main races aren't feeling particularly violent, carry interesting technology for trade, or otherwise become an invaluable ally in the fight against your enemies. In short they make things much more interesting!



For those of us who'd like to see minor races incorporated into Endless Space, there are several questions which must be asked from a developmental point of view:

- Is it fun? How does this actually enhance game play and the franchise universe?

- Does it unbalance the current races in game?

- How much time and money would be needed to implement this feature? How can expense be minimized while still delivering an enjoyable product?



With this thread I'd love to see anyone who cares trying to answer those questions as best they can. It's easy for us to say that the concept is cool (because it is) but making it a reality is another thing!



Sorry if this topic has already been posted about before, I didn't find anything which really properly dissected the subject.

CIV V has "city-states" in addition to civilizations. They provide you with benefits if you ally or befriend them, and offer missions. You get a reward if you are the first to discover them. There are diplomatic penalties (from other civilizations) if you go to war with any of them. If you do it often enough the remaining city-states will even collectively declare war on you.



That might be a good model for minor races if you prevent them from ever being able to leave their cluster (don't let them use certain technologies) and don't make any rewards/benefits they provide dependent upon their economy. The idea is to add another political dimension, rather than just something more to conquer. Perhaps based on a custom faction (with cosmetic differences for each race) that has a lot of trait tradeoffs (slow traveler etc.) that take advantage of the fact they're limited to one cluster (and also severely slow expansion).

Igncom1 wrote:
Re-skinned, re-lored and possibly over several systems, a deviant group of sowers who are working towards a more peaceful solution to their problems.



There Lore possibility's with the faction themselves for multiple factions, like UE barons or different Craver swarms.



No need to add some half-assed new species for every minor faction, lots of 4X games do it and its pointless, they have no reason for being and no connection to anything.

I like this idea the most. I think it would add a lot of flavor to the universe and the current races, and make them much more interesting. New, meaningless races don't really appeal to me, unless they're primitive (but that's what Friendly Locals is for!)

tanstaafl wrote:
CIV V has "city-states" in addition to civilizations.

As i read the first post i immediately thought of these "city-states" from civ. Having something like that could give some extra "spice".



But Igncom1 is also right. If you do a "half-assed" implementation of this without any connection to the universe and too much static ( i mean just because they are some "minor races" they don't have to be like the "city-states" always just doing exactly the same, staying at the same spot... probably a bit difficult to explain but i hope you get me. They have to be somehow dynamic).



So this is not only a technical thing it should be done very carefully from the narrative/story/creative side.

Maybe something related to the races of Distant Worlds could be better than copying Civilization V ?

i want to see minor races as well, the galaxy is too empty with just the factions.

The fastest way of creating minor factions for a game like Endless Space would be to pre assign a certain number of systems to them at the start of each new game (not a large territory but something like 5 at huge galaxy, 4 or 5 at large etc..) and make them a sort of non expanding heavily handicapped version of the "mother" races.



Issues regarding balance can be easily revolved for a minor race by limiting the maximum tonnage of their navy to destroyer size and no higher, weapons that can be researched can also be tuned down to represent the fact that minor factions/races do not have access to the vast resources and manpower necessary for super heavy ships and ultra advanced weapons the main factions possess.



The concept of minor factions/races aside from the already existing "robot locals"/"friendly population" adds the illusion that the galaxy is not empty at start of play and that races/factions (aside from the near mythological Endless) before your own did in fact exist.



I should also add that an alliance with a minor race may add more strategic depth by effectively creating the reality of buffer states in the game. These buffer states can be shields between the player and another main (hostile) race that had decided to suddenly declare war on you but is unable to since the player's territory and the AI's territory do not link up, imagine the hostile main faction having to have to go through a choke point where the player's fleet using a system with ship improvement addons built slaughters the navy of the much larger hostile main race AI navy. Also just as significant is the fact that a non expanding minor race who forms an alliance with the player can be by the player considered a "safe" alliance and not likely to end in sudden massive bloodshed and war when the AI decides it has tired of the player or deemed the player weak enough to conquer.