David, you and Alex are planning to give the ethos system some effects later, I suppose? At least, like how Luddic attitude controls some dialog options (though only cosmetically, as far as I could see).
I think it'd be
fun, but I can't say anything without having done it yet. Without going too deep, I don't think the ethos points can be fairly used until the player has defined their character by hitting a lot of them first - and "liar" kinda dominates right now just due to dialog hinjinks. But maybe it should all be considered relative anyway, and if there's a good floor value per ethos before they start affecting things...
(Luddic attitude does in fact open up some easier, ahem, paths for dealing with Church/Pather interactions in some missions.)
Weirdly enough, I've never caught onto the whole "Jaspis being the luddic equivalent of Provost Baird" thing, it didn't seem obvious to me at all.
Good! I was very intentional about trying to make the whole thing feel different from Baird.
I definitely enjoyed getting roasted for picking cynical dialogue options when visiting the Shrines, though - it's not very often that I witness an NPC calling me a jerk - and that it feels completely justified!
Haha! Well, quit being a jerk

I'm also surprised to read that the entire Jethro questline wasn't originally in plan, given how significantly fleshed out it is, I assumed that this was a set-up for a Galatia-equivalent questline, a sort-of a separate faction-based main quest line, not unlike, say, Fallout: New Vegas' system.
To bring back my point about rigidity in RPG design, I don't want to make an equivalent set of activities for each faction and let you choose like it's something as shallow as choosing a color. The point is that they are intrinsically different organizations, with different internal conflicts, and different power dynamics - and so on and so on. I think their identities should be built up out of a set of unique and specific interactions rather than templates with the descriptors switched out. Similarly, I'm perfectly happy if it isn't possible to relate to them all in the same way! Anyway, we'll have to see how to pans out in development.
(Yeah, I know we have the commission system, but you gotta make some allowances eh?)
In any case, I wish you the best in cooking up that narrative payoff for Galatia and other questlines! Starsector as a game has always been very dear to me, ever since I bought it all the way back in 2016, and I'm always looking forward to seeing where will it go next!
Thank you, we hope to deliver!
What was the XI Battlegroup? Does it use the same class of hulls the XIV use or did they have some unique warships in their fleet? what would have happened if they had stayed alongside the XIV? What outcome it could have on the whole story. It makes me so jittery looking forward to newer ship classes you guys make as they are not only great for combat but they also explain the personality of each and every faction in the persean sector.
I shall assume your questions are rhetorical (because I don't have answers).
... And I realize I never talked about anti-lore in the blog post despite saying I would. Oops. But in short: leaving space for questions makes the world feel big. Answering all the questions and making every noun closely related to every other makes the world feel very small (see: the pitfalls of many Star Wars productions). In this case, it is a question we'll answer if we think we can make it an interesting and worthwhile experience in the game. If not, then it's up to you!
I though l was going to love hating Arroyo after my first experience with him. Interestingly, he grew much more sympathetic as a character the moment I roleplayed a character that was taking advantage of him. Incidentally, do you have a plan to add some gender-specific dialogue in the future, David?
Same - I did *not* intend to write Arroyo as sympathetic at all, but somehow it happened.
Gender-specific: If you're asking for romance options, then probably not. I think the player is too blank-slate to make that really work, in my mind. ( -- Though you did get Princess of Persea!)
And generally, to the previous point about "anti-lore", answering questions about how gender is constructed/viewed/modified in various societies in the Persean Sector is... a huge project to take on. There are some small references, and maybe I'm happy to leave it at a point where it's pretty open-ended.
I'll add some mod text here, not directed at you, in light of a previous comment: per rule 1. "don't be awful", and 3. no hate speech; we'll tolerate no bigotry in this thread, nor axe-grinding around very specific complaints about some other franchise.Speaking of Loke, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity that the only two ways to resolve that quest are to either give him up to Kanta (and let her get away with it) or to just outright murder the poor bastard. It would be nice to have some more options like keeping him on as crew/an officer, or turning him over to some other faction, or helping him set up a new identity somewhere.
I wasn't sure where I wanted him to end up in the story, so I kept the possibilities pretty constrained. I did feel good about adding a dialog where you can ask him what he wants, at least.
(... And ah, considering his state, I'm not sure he'd make a good officer.)