Hi there,

Like many people who have commented on this forum, I bought Endless Space and played it nonstop for several hours, all the while making note of several flaws and thinking of creative new additions to the game. The following is an in depth list of ideas I thought up while I was playing; I apologize in advance if you think I used to many words to explain a simple idea. I also apologize if some of the ideas I am about to share have already been discussed.



A. Creating Custom Races

Racial Affinity

Curious about the variability of gameplay, I started off my Endless Space experience by developing some custom races. Though I enjoyed the flexibility provided by the numerous trait options available to me, I was mildly irritated by some flaws in choosing my racial affinity. Let me provide an example: for my first custom race, I planned on designing a cousin faction of the Pilgrims that also left the United Empire and settled on an ocean planet. The faction would have the same affinity as the Sophons, and even possess some of the same traits. However, as I quickly discovered creating a race with that kind of background was impossible. In the current build of the game your custom race's appearance, homeworld type, and even the aesthetic appearance of your ships, are all dependent on the racial affinity. What I want is the freedom to pick the appearance of my race and ships, and the ability to choose what planet type my race starts on (of course, this will not include the planet types that require research before they can be settled, unless the faction already has the required technology as one of their racial traits).

I also have two more ideas regarding racial affinity. The first is to have the option to pick a random racial affinity. Of course, it would be foolish of me to forget that the racial affinities have two different racial trait caps of either 60 or 65. A potential solution would be to increase the racial trait cap to compensate for the higher difficulty of having no control over what your racial affinity will be; or put the affinities into two different option blocks, one for the affinities that provide a racial trait cap of 60, and the other for the ones that have a cap of 65. My second idea is have the option to have no racial affinity at all, which subsequently increases the racial trait number cap.

Traits

Though I consider all of the available racial traits to be highly creative, I still encountered a problem picking my traits. One of the issues I have is the absence of racial traits that add/subtract only 1 point from the number cap. On numerous occasions I created a new race or modified an existing one, only to find myself 1-3 points above or below the number cap with no more appealing traits to fill the gap in performance. Having a set of traits with a value of +1 or -1 would enable myself and other players the opportunity to perform slight tweaks to our custom races. With those minor changes we can keep the difficulty of the game balanced, and stay close to our creative vision without having to rework the entire build.



Okay, that is it for changes at the moment. Now let me focus on new additions to the game I thought of.

New Traits

The following is a list of traits I thought would go well with the game, all of them deal with heroes:

Land of Opportunity: Faction starts game with an extra hero slot (also, if player starts a game with this trait then he/she will start with four heroes at the academy)

Prosperous Job Market-Corporate: Faction is more likely to attract heroes with a corporate background

Prosperous Job Market-Administrator: Faction is more likely to attract heroes with a background in administration

Prosperous Job Market-Commander: Faction is more likely to attract heroes with a background in command

Prosperous Job Market-Pilot: Faction is more likely to attract heroes with a background in piloting

Prosperous Job Market-Adventurer: Faction is more likely to attract heroes with an adventurer background

Terrible Job Market-Corporate, Administrator, etc.: Similar to Prosperous Job Market, except it decreases the likelihood of attracting heroes with the associated background

Traits that increase and decrease the time it takes to spawn another hero

Yellow Traits (Traits that provide both positive and negative effects)

Though there are racial traits that provide both positive and negative effects (like Deep Roots), one cannot deny the untapped creative potential of having more traits like that. Anyways here are a few ideas I have:

Logical: Increases Science and Industry production, decreases Food and Dust production

Creative: Increases Food and Dust production, decreases Science and Industry production

Open-Minded: Willingness to try new ideas increases FIDS production, but the some of the new ideas cause moral and ethical issues which stress the population, decreasing approval



Anyway, these are the ideas I can think of right now. I am sure that I will think of some more as I continue to play the game.

This seems like the most recent thread for discussing new ideas for racial traits.



Some feedback on your suggestions:

The job market traits are definitely an interesting suggestion. But I don't know if "Terrible Job Market" is a negative trait, given it presumably would increase the likelihood of other types of hero.

Your ideas for mix-benefit traits seem like good candidates for racial affinities.



I had some ideas for traits left over from the faction competition:

Dust Bank - Start the game with extra dust in your bank.

Re-Entry Specialists - Gain planetary invasion progress for every CP of ships you lose in orbit around a hostile world. (Maybe gain planetary defense progress for every CP lost in orbit around a friendly world too?)

Tax Averse / Voluntary Contributions - Taxation has magnified [diminished] effects on approval.

Thanks for the input.

Just FYI, you will be able to add/edit traits for the custom factions with the modding.