Faction missions

[Sinister2202]

Just to spice up the faction mechanic a little, they should give missions or petitions to the player every once in a while. Right now they feel a bit static.

Each missions or petitions they give would relate to their beliefs. It would act in likeness to mandates for democratic government types. They should be optional and should give influence or unity rewards, as well as temporary boost to faction happiness and their influence income.

 

[methegrate]

I like this. I would just tweak "optional" a little bit and have downsides to not fulfilling the mission. If a faction makes demands that you don't live up to they should be unhappy, with a variety of possible results.

Overall though very in favor of this.

 

[Four eyed fish]

Some of th faction demands can be either inappropriate for your empire, or in achievable.
The faction demands could be cut back to basics and faction petitions (faction missions) required to get a faction to high support percentages.

 

[Woozywyvern]

I like this too - good idea.

 

[methegrate]

Some of th faction demands can be either inappropriate for your empire, or in achievable.
The faction demands could be cut back to basics and faction petitions (faction missions) required to get a faction to high support percentages.

Are we sure that's a bug, not a feature? Factions should be a challenge. If a radical pacifist faction crops up in your warlike empire, well it only stands to reason that they'd make demands that are difficult (if not impossible) to meet.

Or say a religious cult starts to gain traction. In a materialist empire that would be impossible or inappropriate to achieve. But even in another empire, you might not want to accede to their demands given that strengthening this faction could cause you all sorts of trouble in the long run.

Idk... I wouldn't cut faction demands back to basics. If anything I would make them more specific and complex in an effort to make managing factions an actually challenging part of gameplay.

 

[Volapyk]

I like the idea, but what kind of requests/demands would you want them to make?

I dont want to see them be like the democracy mandates, not just because they are tame but because they can be impossible, how do you construct 4 mining stations when there are no unclaimed star systems?

Neither do we want them to feel repetitive, so there need to be quite a few for each of the 8 factions.

Having said that, lets brainstorm a few possibilities to get a better idea of specific what we want to see.

Peaceful:

-Sign NAP with someone (could include a check to see if anyone is willing to do this, or specifically target other peaceful empires)
-Sign white peace in a current war (refusal could increase your WE depending on faction strength)
​

Warlike:

-Declare War (could include a special case humiliate CB or a new type of CB)
-Insult enemy
-Break NAP
-Increase fleet limit/size
​

Xenophile:

-Sign migration treaty
-Join federation, become an associate or get a new associate to your federation
-Increase trust (or opinion) with other empires by a certain amount
​

Xenophobe:

-Break diplomatic ties with other empires
-Enslave xeno species
​

Spiritualist:

-Build new temples, or upgrade existing ones (should ofc check if you have enough planets without temples, or upgrades available)
-Would love to see something about 'converting' pops to spiritualism, but we don't have any direct way to do this properly as of yet, maybe with a future diplomatic update
​

Materialist:

-Research tech (make a, perhaps random, tech available to be researched guaranteed to show up as an option and you have to pick it or fail mission)
-More research/robotic jobs (just like temples, check if possible)
-Build megastructure (more for late game, but could give a speed bonus to build said megastructure)
​

Authoritarian:

-Resettle pops (should mostly be if any planet has overcrowding/unemployed and planets with jobs/room)
-Vassalize enemy
​

Egalitarian:

-Liberate planet (should probably check if a planet is unstable, or have lots of slaves, or perhaps just owned by authoritarian empires)
-Reduce unemployment (again only if possible to build more districts/buildings on said planets)
​

A lot of missions/requests would make sense with a wider range of diplomatic options, that we hopefully would get one day, like influencing other empires with your ideals.

 

[Four eyed fish]

Are we sure that's a bug, not a feature? Factions should be a challenge. If a radical pacifist faction crops up in your warlike empire, well it only stands to reason that they'd make demands that are difficult (if not impossible) to meet.

Or say a religious cult starts to gain traction. In a materialist empire that would be impossible or inappropriate to achieve. But even in another empire, you might not want to accede to their demands given that strengthening this faction could cause you all sorts of trouble in the long run..

You have a good point, but it's a bit imersion braking to be asked to have 3 tech agreements when you haven't met 3 empires or 3 appropriate empires. Synth envy when no other empire has them. Would materialist faction in a fanatic purifier still want research agreements?
I would like your more complex and varied faction requrements, if they were locked when in appropriate. If you have enough of them then you can have a random selection to meet, that could posably synergies with those coming from other factions as a reason for an action you'd not normally follow. May be I'm getting a bit ahead of my self here.

 

[methegrate]

You have a good point, but it's a bit imersion braking to be asked to have 3 tech agreements when you haven't met 3 empires or 3 appropriate empires. Synth envy when no other empire has them. Would materialist faction in a fanatic purifier still want research agreements?
I would like your more complex and varied faction requrements, if they were locked when in appropriate. If you have enough of them then you can have a random selection to meet, that could posably synergies with those coming from other factions as a reason for an action you'd not normally follow. May be I'm getting a bit ahead of my self here.

No, that's fair.

I mean, to your question about "would a materialist faction in a fanatic purifier..." I would say, quite possibly yes. You might want to run a crusade of fanatic purification, and most of the populous might agree with you, but there's nothing to say a patch of scientists won't crop up demanding greater research ties.

But overall I think you're right. Faction requirements should be based on what you've already achieved, and there should be a range of them. The materialist faction shouldn't always want the same thing. Sometimes they should want research agreements, but maybe sometimes they should want tech you've seized from the debris of blown up alien ships.

A range of requirements, with some randomization and sometimes synergies across factions all sound like great ideas to me. (Then again, on immersion breaking, it frankly has always seemed weird to me that xenophile/xenophobe are two of the foundational ethic choices for empires given that at the start of the game you don't even know that other life forms exist...)

 

[Sinister2202]

I like this. I would just tweak "optional" a little bit and have downsides to not fulfilling the mission. If a faction makes demands that you don't live up to they should be unhappy, with a variety of possible results.

Overall though very in favor of this.

I agree. That could give more purpose to why players should care about it in the first place.

I like the idea, but what kind of requests/demands would you want them to make?

I dont want to see them be like the democracy mandates, not just because they are tame but because they can be impossible, how do you construct 4 mining stations when there are no unclaimed star systems?

Neither do we want them to feel repetitive, so there need to be quite a few for each of the 8 factions.

Having said that, lets brainstorm a few possibilities to get a better idea of specific what we want to see.

Peaceful:

-Sign NAP with someone (could include a check to see if anyone is willing to do this, or specifically target other peaceful empires)
-Sign white peace in a current war (refusal could increase your WE depending on faction strength)
​

Warlike:

-Declare War (could include a special case humiliate CB or a new type of CB)
-Insult enemy
-Break NAP
-Increase fleet limit/size
​

Xenophile:

-Sign migration treaty
-Join federation, become an associate or get a new associate to your federation
-Increase trust (or opinion) with other empires by a certain amount
​

Xenophobe:

-Break diplomatic ties with other empires
-Enslave xeno species
​

Spiritualist:

-Build new temples, or upgrade existing ones (should ofc check if you have enough planets without temples, or upgrades available)
-Would love to see something about 'converting' pops to spiritualism, but we don't have any direct way to do this properly as of yet, maybe with a future diplomatic update
​

Materialist:

-Research tech (make a, perhaps random, tech available to be researched guaranteed to show up as an option and you have to pick it or fail mission)
-More research/robotic jobs (just like temples, check if possible)
-Build megastructure (more for late game, but could give a speed bonus to build said megastructure)
​

Authoritarian:

-Resettle pops (should mostly be if any planet has overcrowding/unemployed and planets with jobs/room)
-Vassalize enemy
​

Egalitarian:

-Liberate planet (should probably check if a planet is unstable, or have lots of slaves, or perhaps just owned by authoritarian empires)
-Reduce unemployment (again only if possible to build more districts/buildings on said planets)
​

A lot of missions/requests would make sense with a wider range of diplomatic options, that we hopefully would get one day, like influencing other empires with your ideals.

If the devs actually do something like this, then that would depend on what they would make. But I like the ideas you have put out.

I guess it would depend on actions that could give more attraction towards their own ethos, or just actions that are related to their beliefs. ie materialist asking for you to create x amount of robots by x amount of years or something. And for xenophobes they could ask you to do Fear Campaign edict. Egalitarians would ask you to do Encourage political thought edict or raise living conditions on certain marginalized group of species. etc etc

Also, "universal" missions would be nice as well. If a colony has like over 50% of pops that are certain ethos, they could petition you to do certain campaigns like luxury goods or encourage pop growth on that colony, or do information quarantine for ruling ethos attraction, if that faction belongs to ruling ethos.

For a bit more depth, maybe they can give petitions to you which if you accept, it could give you positive effects as well as negative modifier. Something political.

Example:
Xenophobe faction's petition: "[Ruler title], there are some xeno sympathizers on colony X. We have the resources to take action bla bla bla. Just say the word."

Militarist petition: "[Ruler title], we have waited long enough. We have enough ships. Let's declare war against our rival X. Do you accept?"

Authoritarian: You must exert your legitimacy across all our colonies in the empire, [ruler title]. We must launch a re-education campaign."

 

[methegrate]

I wonder if it would also be useful to hide the specific triggers as well. I always think this is kind of immersion breaking, when factions and mandates make these hyper specific demands. Sort of like, “oh, the people know they want exactly six mining stations do they?”

What if instead, for example, the materialist demand was “Invest in robotics.” On the back end the system would have a trigger for when you’ve built X new robots or Y new assembly plants, but as the player you wouldn’t see that. It might feel much more organic to simply invest in robotics until you find that the people are happy. Or to until you have to decide that this faction simply cannot be pleased, and then act accordingly. (Which would have the nice side bonus of being realistic. History has plenty of examples of pain-in-the-ass political movements that wouldn’t take yes for an answer.)