I would be happy with just their junk little startup world as the starting point. If you get really lucky with human startup you can sort of arrange it. but its not the same.

The Tinkers and Gardeners are intended to eventually be playable races in the first expansion (assuming there is one). Neither of them has any ships yet, and both will require special mechanisms both for their internal economies and their diplomatic relations, so they're not suited to be playable at the moment, but I thought it would be fun to include the Tinkers as a minor faction. Minor factions will have much more impact on the game (other than just being free colonists) with the diplomatic/event system.

Hopefully we will have time and resources to build out the minor factions a bit, with more custom assets and maybe even a few ships, but we will have to wait and see.

Done properly in current build, you can actually play them *sorta*. Requires some good luck, but the way colony ships work you can almost abandon your race, and seed them across the stars, works really well as human player.

You can do that any population type, but you're still playing with your starting race's ship choices and tech tree.

Arioch wrote:You can do that any population type, but you're still playing with your starting race's ship choices and tech tree.

Though, interestingly, we do have the capacity to unlock the ability to construct other races' hulls. This is something I think might be kindof cool -- say giving a Teros empire with a sufficiently large and loyal Orthin population the option of taking on a research project to figure out how to build Orthin-style Dreadnaughts.

Not exactly a high-priority feature atm, but it's the kind of thing we are, in theory, in a position to do, and which might be worth thinking about as we get into balancing and polishing the core game.

sven wrote:Though, interestingly, we do have the capacity to unlock the ability to construct other races' hulls. This is something I think might be kindof cool -- say giving a Teros empire with a sufficiently large and loyal Orthin population the option of taking on a research project to figure out how to build Orthin-style Dreadnaughts.

Not exactly a high-priority feature atm, but it's the kind of thing we are, in theory, in a position to do, and which might be worth thinking about as we get into balancing and polishing the core game.

Interesting indeed, but to make it practical you'll need a way to slow down the gameplay. Bigger galaxy and more expensive Level 4/5 tech for example. You'd need a player to have time to conquer and assimilate foreign race, but not being close to getting a Dread Star (or a Superdreadnout) yet.

Agree about tech advance speed, once you hit a certain point you skyrocket. Perhaps a starting slider that would determine an overall research penalty to allow slow research games?

With the current galaxy size making tech more expensive means winning the game without the high level stuff. Some more complex (or totally different) approach is needed.

bjg wrote:With the current galaxy size making tech more expensive means winning the game without the high level stuff. Some more complex (or totally different) approach is needed.

I think all the curves for mid/late game tech costs, along with ship metal/wrench costs need to change pretty dramatically. Experimenting a bit with that is actually on my short term TODO list. You may see significant changes to mid/late cost balancing very soon.

That said, we're still working with very "broad strokes" when it comes to this kind of balancing -- diplomacy, the "event deck", and the morale system will all have big impacts on game pacing as well -- so putting a lot of time into refining the balance doesn't make much sense until those features are present.

I wasn't complaining nor proposing immediate changes.

bjg wrote:I wasn't complaining nor proposing immediate changes.

Yes, it's me who's complaining From what I've been seeing, both in player save-game uploads, and in my own test playthroughs, I think the mid/late balance/pacing if off. And I think it's off badly enough that making some quick changes now, before the next big feature patches go in, is probably sensible.

Can we have an option somewhere that turns the ability to build dreadstars off? If you are going to allow a research other factions ships function, this would be far more interesting then the plain vanilla dread stars (Identical for everyone, and IMO rather ugly). And, any chance of having some form of extended tech on the tech trees (even if it has a minimal use). Because as of now you hit a point where research is totally valueless...

Chasm wrote:And, any chance of having some form of extended tech on the tech trees (even if it has a minimal use). Because as of now you hit a point where research is totally valueless...

Sure, when we get around to adding a epilogue screens, we could add a tech that does nothing, but increases you final score (as is common in many strategy games). But imo, the bigger problem is that the late game techs are too comming in too fast (or maybe people are finishing their conquest of the galaxy too slowly) so people are often completing the whole tree, which, ideally, wouldn't actually be happening.

(When we add a "council" victory condition (which is one part of the diplomatic system) that should also help complete games before the techs run out.)

Another point to realize is some people like to prolong endgame, and making future techs give a minor but noticeable advantage might appeal to some. Everyone is going to have a different play style, so long as they like the game it doesn't matter how they choose to play it.

Chasm wrote:Another point to realize is some people like to prolong endgame, and making future techs give a minor but noticeable advantage might appeal to some. Everyone is going to have a different play style, so long as they like the game it doesn't matter how they choose to play it.

A fair point! I think the MOO2 "+score" techs did have an interesting marginal use, because they increased the number of weapons you could mount, via the miniaturization feature. We should perhaps brainstorm a little and see if we can think of similar "perks" we could hand out as a consequence of very late game "ultra-tech" research projects.