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[Chaos Farseer]

Currently, the high-tech ships are all associated with the Tri-Tachyon, for the most part. (The other factions do occasionally use wolves and buffalo, but still.) It'd be nice to have another faction which uses high-tech ships, just so that they aren't immediately associated with the TTs.

Or, perhaps the pirates could be modified to use a random distribution of all ships, instead of primarily low-tech ships. Which would work nicely with mods, since then they'd really look like messy, slapped-together fleets.

[XazoTak]

A faction working actively to disrupt the established factions, particularly the Hegemony. Instead of simply offering the player a commision, they should offer plentiful missions that will lead the player into incentivized confrontations (read: fun) with factions that the player is often on good terms with (Hegemony and TT in particular).

Such a faction would not even need to have colonized planets and ships of its own. It could simply work in the shadows, hidden among those that they try to disrupt.

So... the Luddic Path?

No, more Mafia-like.
I really really really want to be in the space Mafia.
Fighting huge pointless wars in the endgame? No thanks.
Running around with a stealthy fleet of frigates and marine transports, crippling the functions of large factions? Yes please.

[SCC]

What you want to do still sounds like Luddic Path. The closest alternative would be Tri-Tachyon, when they aren't sporting machine hordes at their command.

[Goumindong]

I feel like Persean League and Sindrian Diktat are way too similar.

In terms of construction they feel like it but they don’t in terms of lore.

The Hegemony is a conservative “democracy”. Concerned mainly about policing the world. It’s a military dictatorship without a dictator. Which means it in effect acts more like a one party meritocracy or
politocracy*. Kinda like what you could imagine the US would be come if we are unable to get over our worship of service members.

Tri-Tach is your standard science mega Corp that got too big to be considered a “company” and of course is entirely immoral.

The Diktat is a fascist dictatorship pretty explicitly.

The independents are... well pirates but they don’t call themselves pirates and want to hide behind an idea of neutrality for the time they’re not breaking the law. They are potentially the odd ones out because the Persean League is similarly constructed.

The PL is the odd one out here because functionally they’re independents who banded together against the hegemony. (So they’re NATO or the EU, but more NATO). So they should look like the independents. Part of the reason they’re the odd one out is that their fleet doctrine is at odds with their core identity. The other is that they’re way too big. A non-unified polity shouldn’t have a unified fleet doctrine or barely even a united banner (but we might need one for ease of political representation in the game)

Most mods exacerbate this fact because rather than putting their independent faction that dislikes the hegemony in as a part of the persean league or independents they add them to the game as their own faction.

Now ideally it would be possible to have factions that locked their relationship status permanently or semi-permanently. That way you could have the persean league be 10 different factions (each with their own unique doctrine) and when modders added factions that are, by fluff, essentially persean league, they could remove a generic PL planet and replace it with their unique faction.

Then you could have the Heg, PL, and TT all be hostile to each other but friendly to the Diktat, who is hostile to the independents, who are friendly to everyone but the diktat. The Church is freindly to everyone. The pathers hostile to everyone but the Church and independents. And pirates hostile to everyone.



*to distinguish the fact that people who succeed in the military are not necessarily meritous as people might assume the word means but rather adept at politics.

[Igncom1]

The league is essentially their 'capital' world and it's 'allies' more then a equal and balanced league.

They have a fleet doctrine because the capital has one of the largest if not THE largest shipyards left in the sector. It's essentially space Athens in the Delian League or what it essentially is the 'Athenian Empire.'

Essentially what I am saying is the the Persean League could be better described as the 'Kazeronian Empire.' With the league members being more like vassal states.

Which could make for an EPIC mod by the way. Rise of the Kazeronian Empire or some such.

[SCC]

The Hegemony is a conservative “democracy”. Concerned mainly about policing the world. It’s a military dictatorship without a dictator. Which means it in effect acts more like a one party meritocracy or
politocracy*. Kinda like what you could imagine the US would be come if we are unable to get over our worship of service members.

Hegemony's description says something about democracy, but feels much more like a military dictatorship, or a junta at best. And they're not the worst, despite that...

The PL is the odd one out here because functionally they’re independents who banded together against the hegemony. (So they’re NATO or the EU, but more NATO). So they should look like the independents. Part of the reason they’re the odd one out is that their fleet doctrine is at odds with their core identity. The other is that they’re way too big. A non-unified polity shouldn’t have a unified fleet doctrine or barely even a united banner (but we might need one for ease of political representation in the game)

A hundred cycles ago they might have been just a loosely connected alliance of worlds and warlords, but now I imagine they have standardised fleets partially for reducing logistics required, and partially because Kazeron wanted to cut down the production costs.

The league is essentially their 'capital' world and it's 'allies' more then a equal and balanced league.

Kazeron is important, but it's not exactly a capital. It's not as imposing or important as Chicomoztoc is. There are some competing factions within the League, though they could perhaps use getting strengthened to make it clearer that Persean League isn't just Kazeron and friends.

[Goumindong]

There was a reason that “democracy” was in quotes

[Nimaniel]

My suggestion was based on the idea that factions should be different in more ways than just flavor and description. For all intents and purposes, you can swap the name and lore of Sindrian Diktat and Hegemony, and nothing significant would have changed.

Luddic Path currently only have two thing that differentiates them:
1) They have (or establish?) bases outside the core worlds, and send raids
2) Sleeper cells

If you befriend the Path, you can't do anything meaningful in relation to what makes them unique as a faction.

For a sandbox game, Starsector currently seem a lot like it makes assumptions about how you want to / should play. Most notably, it's kinda crazy that vanilla does not have an option to start as a pirate. The same could be said for Luddic Path, if that faction was fleshed out more. Hell, even just being as it is now, I'd be happy to start a game with a Path 'commission', for a change of pace.

So when asked what is lacking with regards to the vanilla factions, it's not more 'same-y' factions, it's either new factions that are actually different, or fleshing out the existing factions to be more interesting.

[nomadic_leader]

My suggestion was based on the idea that factions should be different in more ways than just flavor and description.

Yea seconding this, they have all totally different lore and political ideologies, yet they all (except pirates and I guess Luddic Path) basically behave exactly the same in terms of reputation and response to different player/faction actions  Some goods being forbid here or there doesn't mean much.

It's possible to add all kinds of variables to the .faction file that would change the way they interact with the player and other factions, but this is never done. e.g. bribery, invasions, expeditions, wars, etc.

Basically if you critique this from a political science perspective, Alex and David are saying (unintentionally, I'm pretty sure) that ideology doesn't matter, all that matters is realpolitic, every faction must/will pursue a ruthless Hegemony First policy, etc.

For a sandbox game, Starsector currently seem a lot like it makes assumptions about how you want to / should play.

Yep.

[StarGibbon]

For a sandbox game, Starsector currently seem a lot like it makes assumptions about how you want to / should play. Most notably, it's kinda crazy that vanilla does not have an option to start as a pirate. The same could be said for Luddic Path, if that faction was fleshed out more. Hell, even just being as it is now, I'd be happy to start a game with a Path 'commission', for a change of pace.

*Currently* is the operative word here. Incomplete game in active development and all.  Failing to support a certain playstyle or player roleplaying wish isnt making any assumptions about how they think they should play. It's just a matter of what the game can support with practical limits on the developers time. 

Based on how far the game has come so far, I think it's reasonable to expect that more options will become available in time.  For instance, I saw that the notifications we get now on merchant convoys leaving ports would support a more "piratey" playstyle, perhaps to be expanded on in the future.

But not every playstyle will be supported. Some things you'll have to look to mods for.

[Dudok22]

Starsector world feels like futuristic space Syrian civil war. Strong militaristic faction with claims on the whole sector which used to be "theirs", coalition of different rebel factions against hegemony, religious moderates and fanatics using the chaos to carve out their own territories, faction with better tech but much less manpower as a main rival, and independents that don't want to be governed by hegemony but stay independent because hegemony is overextended.
 

[NephilimNexus]

Aside from that, I'd like to see some other corporation faction. There were others, besides Tri-Tachyon, that have managed to survive the collapse.

... and with that thought, I say there is no real need to be too creative.  Let's just admit that Alpha Centauri did it the best and that there's no shame in imitating them.

Hedgemony = Spartans
Tri-Tachyon = Morganites
Luddic Church = Believers

See?  We've already copied three factions, so let's just finish it out the same way.  We need something representing the Gains, the Hive, the University and the Peacekeepers.

[JustALittleGravitas]

*to distinguish the fact that people who succeed in the military are not necessarily meritous as people might assume the word means but rather adept at politics.

The term for that is technically "meritocracy".  How exactly mainstream culture flipped it around and misinterpreted it is rather a mystery.  Also I'm going to steal politiocracy to describe one party states.  And nobody can stop me any more than they could stop meritocracy from being stolen.

I'd say the Hegemony is more uh, Prussian, for lack of a better word.  An Army with a state, rather than a state with an Army.  The state happens to be democratic rather than aristocratic, but that's not terribly relevant.

[TrashMan]

*Currently* is the operative word here. Incomplete game in active development and all.

It's already at 0.9.
This is generally the stage at which game mechanics are set.

[StarGibbon]

*Currently* is the operative word here. Incomplete game in active development and all.

It's already at 0.9.
This is generally the stage at which game mechanics are set.

Mechanics =/= content.

And this is mostly meaningless in the age of games in early access/ongoing development. Each new version has contained more content. It's not unreasonable to hope for some more.