How will other factions be implemented?

[contributor]

I'm curious to know how it will be when we can play as other factions. Will we always pick just three or could it be 4 or 5? Will the other ones play with a computer AI?

[johndramey]

Also, will we be able to war with them?

[slayernz]

And will steel song captains wear fishnet tights like they do in later years aka ST

[Cory Trese]

You'll be able to pick between 3 and 6 Factions in the Elite edition.

At this time I cannot say for sure that we'll ever add a friendly AI to ST 4X.

The Factions do not go to war with each other. All features we'd love to include in a future game.

Any quadrant in which that occurred was lost to Narvidians, Guild or Xenos and does not appear in the universe's timeline.

And it is not that I dislike these ideas or the concepts we've heard here. If I had a big fat budget and I wasn't worrying about the incredible cost of developing a new game, I would have blown the scope up and worked on 4X another four months before Alpha adding all sorts of stuff.

[contributor]

Thanks.

Ummmm, if the factions don't go to war, what's a Solar War?

And yes I understand that this isn't a Kickstarter project and won't be as full-featured as it could be because of that. So I'm not asking to harass you, just wondering.

I do think though that more diplomatic depth would be a huge addition to the game that would add a lot of replayability. Managing inter-faction conflict is not quite the same as playing enemies off each other to get ahead in the long run. Could there be a way to eventually do "diplomacy" with the xenos. I know that negotiation is not possible, but what if some sort of advanced tech gave us the ability to influence their behavior. Call it, Alien Mind Control 1, 2, 3 and 4. What if you could switch them to defensive for awhile, or cause them to attack each other. What if you could kidnap their queen and hold her hostage/ransom? Utter animosity doesn't mean there's no means of control, just ask lots of married people.

[Cory Trese]

I guess we just don't have enough words for the varieties and types of conflicts. It has long been called a Solar War and I'm going to say a more descriptive name for it would not fit on any screens. Originally I wanted to use the names from Star's Edge (Solar War is 'Venera Bellari') but at the time I was sure no one wanted all those details.


***

That said, we are hard at work on Diplomatic depth -- check out that Political system we're growing. The next phase really makes it interesting. =)

Managing the inter-Faction conflict is more interesting *to me* than the standard 4X diplomacy system.

Maybe my little experiment called "The 4X Cory always wanted to play" won't work.

The hope is that it will work almost as well as the experiment called "the space trading game Cory always wanted to play" which ended up being called Star Traders.

We are, however, incorporating feedback as quickly as our schedule and budget allows.

And I know that you're not harassing me or trying to make this difficult.

***

The Diplomacy system will incorporate the Xenos in ways that mesh well with Star Traders RPG. You'll be able to spend EP to spy on them (know when they're turning hostile) or locate their homeworld (the one that, if you kill it, resets the AI smartness.)

And lots of other stuff too.

For enemies you can negotiate with (and be betrayed by) you'll have to wait until Narvidians. Humans can no more negotiate with a Xeno than we can negotiate with a fungus or killer bees.


Keep it coming, I'm learning new stuff from every post.

[Deleted]

This is so making me want to watch Babylon 5. The diplomatic stuff alone was worth the watch.