How are the new factions stack up against the existing?

[hlo]

I have been playing with Thulun, Cadar, and Clan Javat for many games now. Thulun and Cadar bonus CP assures I can build fast on new colonies. Clan Javat mines bonus keep my economy afloat. For me this will make my survival in Normal+ difficulty settings easier.

What with the 3 new factions? Is there a table/matrix we can see how they stack up against the existing? A game (even a bad one) takes long time to finish. I like to know how these factions are before wasting time and money (mere $2) to find out.

[khamya9]

They appear to me to be aimed at players of very high difficulty settings as they seem both less powerful than existing factions, but with traits that make them very handy on hard/crazy/impossible.

Molkumne looks like an inferior devaltos. D gets 3tp/colony AND +4$/tp. M just gets +2tp/colony. Nothing else. While this does make them a horrible choice vs devaltos, if you are going for a purely economic bonus, you can take them with devaltos and javat. Allowing massive economies. Their racial techs are comparable to devaltos, but they get absolutely nothing at rank 2; making devaltos even more superior, but allowing you to double up on the number of colonies with a high trade bonus if you take both factions together. Remember you want to keep a balanced number of worlds per faction, especially on higher difficulty. So take molkumne if you want to combine with devaltos for maximum trade, and cadar is a great combo for the third thanks to their alliance racial tech.

Alta Mesa is an interesting construction/ warrior faction. They have a construction bonus for ships only, and late game get extra orbital factories. The ship cp bonus is one free turn worth so you pretty much need a spreadsheet to see where they are better or worse than cadar or thulun with the fixed +2. Take a ship with a cost of 44 cp being built on a world that outputs 9 per turn (without thulun bonus). Alta mesa would finish in 4 turns, most others in 5. Cadar/thulun will finish in the same 4 turns. At 45 cp cost, Alta mesa still finishes in 4, but cadar/thulun now need 5 for that last one point. At a cost of 55 or higher thulun/cadar are superior. And Alta mesa never apply a bonus to colony improvements, just ships. Racial tech though they absolutely beat thulun and rival cadar. In addition to the orbital factories (which greatly overcome the +2 cadar/thulun bonus) they get fighters with torpedoes. I still like the cadar alliance political tech and their new critical/hit attack is astonishing, but those fighters are quite impressive. So thulun/cadar own the fast game, and thulun has a research edge, but Alta mesa is stronger late game. The trick, though, is if you need an early game defense fleet, Alta mesa churns out cheap ships faster. You don't build colonies faster, but you can absolutely defend better. Very helpful on the garden or other difficult settings.

Zenrin are the answer to morale problems. They are resistant (but not immune) to spice and population morale, so they only get hurt by overbuilding on worlds and random explore results. What I don't understand is why their racial technologies provide morale boosts and spice. This seems to make their racial technologies utterly useless, or at least, highly questionable. Still, if you're having difficulty with morale, they are your answer. They also get a variant planetary invasion ship, but I have yet to see why it is helpful, given the effectiveness of existing transports. I am still experimenting however. Their resistance means you can let them fall/behind on spice and habs, especially early game, in favor of defense ships or mines. Again, very handy when hard pressed in an early attack, or to help recover from a disastrous political situation.

[koles]

My first impression is that playing new clans makes your colonization progress much slower

looks like Alta Mesa bonus work better than Thulun/Cadar only when we are building cheap ships (like low level fighters) and our CP is bigger than 2*number_of_turns needed to complete ship. when our CP is less than that number - still Thulun/Cadar with theirs +2CP will be better.

but there is another factor
to faster build cheap ships with Alta Mesa - you need infrastructure, that is builded faster by Thulun/Cadar. sure you can screw mines/exchanges/palaces and build only habs factories and spice halls on Alta Mesa planets - but without them you dont get creds to maintain big number of those ships
in fact Thulun and Cadar with theirs bonuses can build half economy + full production infrastructures in time when Alta Mesa can build only full production infrastructure...

I need to test it more, but I think that the strongest from new clans is Zinrin becouse it allows you to skip some habs and invest time at begining to build earlier mines/factories/exchanges/palaces

for me - those 3 clans make game more challenging and much harder but maybe because of fact that I almost dont play games with mixed factions
anyway its my first impression

[Deleted]

Two of three new factions come with exclusive ship hulls, which can provide a significant combat bonus if your play style matches with the new hulls.

[abysmal]

Mok is also immune to any sort of trade ban.

Sent from my 0PCV1 using proboards

[Brutus Aurelius]

Moklumne also gets orbital Tradeways that give huge TP boosts for 0 Quality.

[bookworm21]

Well, I'm just waiting for the folks at apple to tear their thumbs away and approve it for release

Hmm... Torpedo fighters...

[khamya9]

Feb 19, 2015 6:29:31 GMT -5 Brutus Aurelius said:

Moklumne also gets orbital Tradeways that give huge TP boosts for 0 Quality.

Its not a huge boost, compared side by side against devaltos they are comparable.

Top devaltos building gives: 8tp, 2rp, 15spice, $80/t upkeep 1q
Top mok building gives: 10tp, 2rp, $60/t upkeep 0q

Remembering the Dev +$4/tp that gives a base profit of 72/t Dev, and 90/t mok so you're paying $18/t for 15 spice going for the Dev building. That means no spice hall needed balancing out the 0q on the mok building. But also the saved maintain for the spice hall pushes the Dev building over mok, though mok does then have the research edge from the spice hall. Including a spice hall 3 on the mok numbers gives a final comparison of:

Dev: $72/t, +2 rp, 15 spice,1q
Mok: $65/t, +4rp, 15spice, 1q

For an impartial comparison the top exchange (6) gives the following base profit:
$30/t ($78 for Dev), +3ep, +5rp, 15spice, 1q

So if you want money, nothing beats devaltos with a normal exchange, next best is devaltos with their unique building, and third best is mok with their unique building. So, I'm not seeing this as "huge".

Remember all trade agreements effect everyone equally, no one gets a higher boost from a trade route than anyone else on a per building basis. Though Dev does get more per colony thanks to their higher base trade per colonly (though, considering how high trade gets, one extra point isn't a big issue).

[khamya9]

Feb 19, 2015 6:00:07 GMT -5 abysmal said:

Mok is also immune to any sort of trade ban.

Sent from my 0PCV1 using proboards

Where are you getting this? Its definitely not in game, mine have been in multiple embargoes and trade wars all game and definitely my economy was hurting from it. Nothing showed their worlds had any more income than the other factions.

[abysmal]

It's in the updated help file. Rereading it, they are immune to tp and population penalties during trade bans.

Maybe Cory Trese can better explain the new factions.

Sent from my 0PCV1 using proboards

[khamya9]

Feb 19, 2015 20:19:48 GMT -5 abysmal said:

It's in the updated help file. Rereading it, they are immune to tp and population penalties during trade bans.

Maybe Cory Trese can better explain the new factions.

Sent from my 0PCV1 using proboards

So not in the faction description,not in the web document and not anywhere in the game. Plus that fi
we is a google doc so I can't read it. Blah.

Also, it appears to not be working, though there's no way to check for sure because no way to see your income per tp.Definitely didn't/doesn't appear to be working based on my planetary income.

Still, it makes sense and does fit with the play style of the other two. These guys might not have the speed of other factions, but good luck stopping them, and they all emphasize efficiency. Its a different feel, but you can do things with these guys when others can't. Like, the mesa orbital factories, they're slower than +2 build, but allow you to skip 2 or 3 factories and build more have or mines, making a more optimal planet and getting more use from a bad one.

[fallen]

Updated the in-game HTML file for the next release.

[Cory Trese]

These Factions present several new play options.

#1. They are all Clans. Mok is unique from De Valtos because it behaves as a Clan, not a Syndicate. After reading the analysis from khamya9, I have run calculated the balancing and see that he is correct -- Mok needs more TP.

#2. Alta Mesa requires infrastructure -- if you get Level 3 Star Forge, you get *3 turns* of CP applied to the new ship. In this case you're able to outperform Cadar and Thulun well past 55CP, and on a high CP world, AM is able to really churn out ships.

#3. These Factions take time to pick up steam in the game, and are a little more difficult to play as a trio because the early game is a challenge as they build momentum.

#4. There is another release coming that adds their custom Training and Treaties, which helps round them out and fix stuff like missing Mok Tech II.

[En1gma]

Can you tell me how clans behave differently than syndicates? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I always thought they worked the same way.

[abysmal]

So does Mok currently have the trade ban immunity or is that later?

Sent from my 0PCV1 using proboards