I was asked to do this by someone, so I will post this idea. Everyone worries about faction balance. This can be solved by bidding for factions. It probably will work best if people do it over skype, say, but it isn't necessary. How does it work? Ok - let me start with an 8 player game.



Everyone is in the game or on skype. The bidding starts. It should go in order of entry into the game, but order won't matter a lot.



Available = each affinity (all 9 right now), but only 1 is available per game.



Bid = Points. How many points (60 to 65 maximum) do you bid? This bidding continues until everyone passes and accepts their current winning bid. What this does is make it cost more to get the better factions, so for example of Sophons affinity is good, is it so good you will play with only 50 points? If so, you win the bid. Maybe the winning Sowers has 60, so he has 10 more points to use than you do.



Once bidding is over, everyone creates their custom race, using the maximum points they bid. They can't go over (people can check in-game to be sure).



There are no restrictions on making the race except for the points used. You can't go above what you bid.



Games will have a LOT more variety now. It will also mean trying new strategies.

Nice idea... I like it.



Would be good for Amplitude to add this into the setup of a multiplayer game!

Yeah, this is really an idea that would be interesting to look into, if I may say so myself.



With Endless Space being the way it is (awesome in most areas ^_^ ) I think it is the right time to start looking into the lobby screen - adding more custom options like this bidding system, forced teams (anyone else really want to do a 2 man vs 6 united AI on Endless difficulty? ) and other similar stuff (or even things unrelated to lobby, like affinity editor or the ability to make your custom race spawn on a specific system instead of letting the gal generator create it for you). With all the core mechanics in place and a lot of other exciting new stuff to come (expansion ftw) I think ES is ready for some extra customization

PANCZASU wrote:
I think it is the right time to start looking into the lobby screen - adding more custom options like this bidding system, forced teams (anyone else really want to do a 2 man vs 6 united AI on Endless difficulty?

Makes a lot of sense... Love the idea of the teams... I'd be up for that example!



Such a pity they can't/won't do hotseat... perhaps in ES2?