I think it is my most cited thread, by now, but here's Slowhand's little explanation of heroes:

Slowhands wrote:
Heroes are different from the rest of their societies in their capacity to use Dust, the partially-sentient nanoparticles created by the Endless. To master it requires great emotional stability as well as an intimate knowledge of and control over one's own strengths and weaknesses. As a general rule, when a sentient being is 'infected' by Dust they end up dead or insane, as they are emotionally or physically incapable of absorbing and controlling it.



The effect of the Dust is particularly difficult for hive-like races or factions that suppress the individual identity within the group (Craver, Horatio, ...). The being who is affected is no longer one of a group and an entity whose character is based on their society, but a unique and different individual with enormous and unusual power. The odds of surviving this psychological tsunami is proportionally more difficult for these types of 'hive-mind' beings.



For all of these reasons, Heroes often become misfits in their previous lives and their own societies, and easily make the transition to being independent consultants (or mercenaries -- there is a fine line between those two in space).



That is the basic reason why Heroes can come from and work for any faction -- they are almost a race apart in and of themselves. The galaxy is large, distances are great, time moves quickly, and identifying oneself with a particular faction becomes less and less important to a Hero.

This is a good idea. However, if I only get to use some of my own races starting heroes I might end up playing only Cravers or Sophons.

I don't think an up starter spacefaring empire should, or would be willing, to hire aliens as heroes/admirals/administrators before even coming into contact with said species and determining it's general posture towards your species. You can argue that perhaps one empire can stumble upon individuals of other species in an early expansion, but in this case I don't think they would be given positions of any significancy beyond "lab experiment".



You could also say that the lore is already established and that all factions acknowledge the existance of all the others, and so when you start a new game you are controlling but a branch of a faction, but this don't change the fact that you still have to develop researches to contact, understand and interact with xeno species.



So, this is how I think it should work, in my humble opinion:



An Empire should start with a view of xenos similar to its lore. As an example, The United Empire should start with a xenophobic view towards other species, Horatio and Hissho perhaps with a condescending view, Sophon and Amoeba perhaps curious and cautious, Cravers outright hostile and so forth.



In this way the possibility to hire xenos as heroes would appear in the same stage for all species, after the first contact with the xeno specie, but would imply in penalties for some ( so the player would have to assess if the advantages of the hero justify its penalties). As an example I don't think a Hissho fleet would be all too happy with a lesser Horatio as its commander, or that human colonists would accept promptly the rule of a Sophon, but a enlighted Amoeba perhaps would be ok to work under a talented human.



Penalties would be aggravated or mitigated depending on researches and on your relations with the other species. While I am aware that individuals may not agree with the politics of its faction, the masses do not care, and it's at least dangerous to have Hissho admirals controlling your fleet while at war with other Hissho ... whom may say where their loyalty really lies ?



Without wanting to extend myself too much, this could also be reflected in a greater control of the "politics" or "aligment" of your empire. Perhaps you want to research "Interstellar Federalism" and "Universal Rights" creating a multicultural, multispecies, startrek/mass effect like empire of happiness, that way you could benefit from diplomatic bonus, xeno heroes, allies and trade. OR perhaps you could research "Anti xeno propaganda" and "Manifest Destiny" and create an Imperium of man like Empire of bigots and fanatics that don't suffer from war exhaustion and have bonus bombarding planets to oblivion.



This way we would have species behaving way differently, with Cravers, for example, unable to hire aliens and research certain branchs of diplomacy/politics whatsoever. While I know this is a balance nightmare, especially for a team striving to implement multiplayer, I thought it would be fun to share my two cents about this subject and perhaps seen it implemented in future expansions, as well as hearing the opinion of my fellow endless spacers.

Zenicetus wrote:
If that's the official lore, then it looks like we're stuck with heroes from other races, even from the beginning of the game. I hope it can be changed so that we only get those other racial heroes after First Contact. Otherwise it makes a mockery of the whole idea of First Contact. "Yeah, I know about these guys.... I've got one as a Fleet Commander."

Since Slowhands is narrative director (see http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/The-team/%28user%29/211 ), we can safely consider it to be the official lore.

But I don't agree with you on the first contact argument. If heroes are vastly different in anything but appearance from their respective races, meeting the true hivemind-like Horatio is completely different to meeting a Horatio hero. You may know they're out there, but you don't know who or what they are. (Unless you get your hero to tell you and even then you've got no real and reliable idea...)

Horatio-Hero shows up at Sophons home planet.



"Hey dude, you look funny, where'd you come from?"



"Fox if I know. Out there some where. I'm a great admin. Hire me?"



Lolwhat.

Good idea and I really don't have anything to add more than a +1

Draco18s wrote:
Horatio-Hero shows up at Sophons home planet.



"Hey dude, you look funny, where'd you come from?"



"Fox if I know. Out there some where. I'm a great admin. Hire me?"



Lolwhat.

Lol

You get +1 as well.

possibly make it a game mod so that only your race's heroes are available and other races' become available as you encounter them or form a treaty with them.

Even if you didn't encounter other factions, you still can have some "cosmopolite" planets where you have some different people from other factions.

Think at it like these : you could have strangers from a far away land that your country didn't meet but just heard of.

At first, I was of the same opinion as you. But I'm now used to the different heroes, and it's a playfull thing to be able to lead fleets with someone from the specie of your enemies.

VieuxChat wrote:
it's a playfull thing to be able to lead fleets with someone from the specie of your enemies.

Oh sure. It just doesn't make any sense until after you've encountered the race.

That's part of the reason I think having it as a mod would be nice. Then you turn it on or off according to how you want to play the game at the time. Have it both ways so to say.

Draco18s wrote:
Oh sure. It just doesn't make any sense until after you've encountered the race.

Exactly! It messes up the whole "First Contact" dynamic, although the devs for this game don't seem to consider that very important.



The other thing that bothers me is the way it telegraphs what other races are out there. I always played GalCiv2 and Civ games with random factions, which (unlike the current ES build) are never identified in the galaxy setup screen. I like expanding out from a homeworld or home territory, and having no idea what's out there. That's the *exploration* part of the 4X game format, after all.



I don't know if the devs plan on including a random faction option for the galaxy setup screen (I hope so!), but if they do, then I don't want to know who my eventual competitors will be, right from Turn One in the game. It's even worse if I've set up a galaxy map with just myself and two other factions, and suddenly there is another alien race onboard who isn't even supposed to be in the game. Did they warp in from another dimension or something?



I know I'm arguing from the perspective of "how other games do it," but I'm probably not the only strategy gamer who likes starting games with hidden and randomized opponent factions. This could be fixed by adding alien Heroes only after First Contact with that race, and restricting the Hero pool to those races the player has selected for the game (or that the random race routine selected, if that option exists).

One quick intermission: How do you want to establish some kind of first contact between Horatio and the United Empire, since both factions have the same origin?

Nosferatiel wrote:
One quick intermission: How do you want to establish some kind of first contact between Horatio and the United Empire, since both factions have the same origin?

Well, the original "Horatio" was a United Empire industrialist so they are more akin to a splinter faction of the United Empire ... but this do not mean that they have been in contact all this time. The fact that the Emperor/High Lords/House of Commons allowed a "excentric" industrialist to basically create a new species devoted to himself, to me , is a sign that they ignored that such thing was happening. Space is a very large place to administrate and a private enterprise such as "departing alone in a single colony ship" could be easily ignored and lost in bureaucracy, especially if the billionaire was actively trying to cover his tracks.



The bottom line is, everything indicates that both factions ignore the existance of one another ... perhaps the Horatio may have records of its humble human origins, but somehow I doubt that their self absorved, egocentric , megalomaniacal leader would have shared this information with his followers, after all there is only Horatio, created in the image of Horatio, for the glory of Horatio.

Nosferatiel wrote:
One quick intermission: How do you want to establish some kind of first contact between Horatio and the United Empire, since both factions have the same origin?

There could be several possibilities, but here's one take on it.



As a splinter group, it would be assumed the Horatio know about the UE and vice-versa. However, the Horatio are very different from the UE in culture, ship design, and biological modification (those big heads). That kind of difference doesn't happen overnight. There must have been many years of isolation between the two cultures.



And remember, the isolation was intentional, on Horatio's part. It might have included destroying all records of his past history, in the process of creating a new culture. On the UE side, they might have just forgotten about that guy who took off for deep space, so many years ago.



If that were the case, then the first meeting as the two empires expanded wouldn't be a true First Contact, but it would share many aspects of two alien races meeting each other.

A man with the ability (and resources) to create an entire clone race of himself may also have the ability to cover it up from UE authorities. Perhaps he paid off the right people to "misplace" reports or spread misinformation. There could be a legend of the great industrialist Horatio heading off into the unknown on search for some mythical Endless technology. But in reality he disappeared to create his own people.



As far as Horatio (the race) not knowing about UE, I think that is easy. Chalk it up to the original man's hubris, like Mrc.Toledo said.



And as far as the original suggestion, I have no problem with alien heroes appearing prior to first contact. That seems to happen quite a bit in science fiction, particularly on TV. Odo from Deep Space 9 comes immediately to mind. It also happens in other 4X games with heroes. Example, Master of Orion II. So I vote not to change it.