I love the basic idea of Heroes, but I feel like the current rules are a bit arbitrary. They feel out-of-context, like rules imposed by some gamemaker, rather than like natural laws of the ES universe. I think this could be easily fixed with a combination of rebalancing and minor rule changes.



1) Academy Size: The hard limit on the number of heroes is very harsh, and totally arbitrary. I get that heroes are powerful, but it would be more elegant if the number of heroes was controlled by economic choices. I would guess that this limit was created because heroes are a crazy bargain. The benefit of a hero, especially a high level one, is far greater than it's upkeep cost. I think this may be why the current limits are so harsh. Consider removing this limit, and instead making it harder to hire heroes, or more expensive to pay for their upkeep. Consider requiring special structures to recruit a hero. E.g. you'd have to build a Ministry Palace before you could assign a hero as governor of a system. Or maybe you have to add an Admirality module to a ship, and include that ship in a fleet, before you can add a hero as admiral of a fleet. Adding these sorts of economic choices can also make the game more interesting. Maybe you could have levels of palaces and modules s.t. a basic-type can only support heroes of level 1-3, while a fancy-type could support heroes of higher levels.



2) Frequency of hero appearance: Also totally arbitrary. Heroes should appear randomly, perhaps with frequency proportional to your influence, your approval rating, or to your choices. Some system infrastructure could increase the chance of attracting heroes.



3) Levelling up: The connection between perks and attributes seems unnecessary. Why should my hero's wit be limited by the number of available wit upgrades? And why must I upgrade wit in blocks of 3-4 points? As an alternative, consider allowing ability points to be used to either increase attributes or to buy perks. Each level, you'd get 3 AP (rather than one, as it is now), and you could split those points as you wished. You could increase attributes at a cost of one ability point per attribute point, or but perks for 2-5 ability points, depending on the perk. Perks would then be interesting characteristics or powers (like the Dust-empowered fleet actions), and not bland combinations of attribute points.

3.1) Maybe you could convert industry to hero-ability points (at some really high ratio, like 100:1). This would be in keeping with the idea of heroes as requiring an investment proportional to their benefit.



4) Attributes: In general, I enjoy the ability to create specialized whatnots (ships, heroes, systems, etc.) in 4x games, it adds interest and strategy. However, right now, Wit controls the bonus for both dust and science, while Labor controls the bonus for both food and production. So there's limited ability to specialize the bonuses of a system governor. I think there should be a separate attribute for each economic FIDS bonus: one that controls food, one that controls production, one that controls science, and one that controls dust.

If Heroes are expanded, which I deeply hope, and enriched, this is essential. I think this is a great idea that has been missed somewhat with all the traffic and suggestions.