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[Majestic7]

I've been thinking about Space Commies - materialistic, collectivist, xenophile or peaceful. I'm not sure whether human marxist utopia or space fungus communists tickle me more in the right direction. Then after I get beaten and ragequit in the first game, I'll come back as Space Hitler for vengeance with xenophobe + militarist.

I hope in the future species ethos can change dramatically due to traumatic events, like a first contact war where they are beaten bloody turning xenophiles into xenophobes.

[Cruxador]

I'm going for a fanatically spiritualist xenophobe nation, with a divine mandate and lots of foreign slaves. It's gonna be great.

[Majestic7]

That could be your propaganda poster. "Become a slave of the Evangelical Mushroom Union today! *It is going to be great!* -Most Holy Leader."

[umiman]

That could be your propaganda poster. "Become a slave of the Evangelical Mushroom Union today! *It is going to be great!* -Most Holy Leader."

Make. Space. Great. Again.

[Majestic7]

I've never bought merchandise for bands or games or anything really, but I could consider buying some Make Space Great Again t-shirts or something.

[RadtheCad]

I don't think you can start as robots. You could trigger the robot rebellion though with too much AI research.

That's what mods are for.

[Majestic7]

I suppose modding robots would be somewhat easy by simply replacing the need for food with the need for energy and minerals. However, considering it would be logical to give them great range of comfortable environments, I presume they'd be somewhat OP.

[JumpingJack]

I suppose modding robots would be somewhat easy by simply replacing the need for food with the need for energy and minerals. However, considering it would be logical to give them great range of comfortable environments, I presume they'd be somewhat OP.

More than likely. If going for a balanced approach, they'd need to have some substantial weaknesses. Turning them into glass cannons would provoke the need for some interesting strategies.

As for me, the scant few times I've messed around with adding artificial races to a game such as this, I tend to arbitrarily limit them to worlds that are barren or nearly so.

[sprinkled chariot]

Military dictatorship
full materialism and science!
xeno relation policy - complete eradication
giant warships and legions of genetically ehnaced power armoured super soldiers and putting all of this under command of general named Horus, nothing can go wrong here.

[Majestic7]

Once we get the espionage expansion, I guess you could make robot species absolutely horrible in espionage or at least espionage defense as a balance move. Basically, make them an open network intelligent that is really easy to infiltrate by any script kiddies. Perhaps make them very vulnerable to orbital bombardment and stuff as well, since they have a lot of infrastructure for hosting the networked intelligence that is easily taken out with EMPs from nukes and such.

I think the usual "horrible diplomacy penalties" way of balancing a powerful species is not a balance choice at all, since warmonger players don't do diplomacy anyway.

[ZeroGravitas]

I suppose modding robots would be somewhat easy by simply replacing the need for food with the need for energy and minerals. However, considering it would be logical to give them great range of comfortable environments, I presume they'd be somewhat OP.

I mean, the game already has robots. It's just a matter of modding them in earlier rather than as a late-game threat analogous to the Revolution or Communism.

[Greenbane]

Species don't have intrinsic advantages and disadvantages, however. That's a different step in the creation process.

I see "Robotic" as a very costly trait which changes the food need to energy/minerals, as suggested. Possibly also granting immunity to hostile environments while capping happiness at, say, 50%. But that might be best reserved for other traits: the core part is the change in food need. The rest, well, artificial life can evolve to be almost indistinguishable from organics.

[RadtheCad]

If you really wanted to balance this kind of stuff, you could extend the research system to include mechanical replacements for biological functions and start robots off without them, say you start as one pop of solar-powered mining bots on a rogue asteroid with a small factory that's fallen into orbit around a star after drifting for centuries, so you have to bootstrap everything and your physical 'bodies' are pretty shit in terms of independence and self-repair compared to biological life until you research nanotech, von Neumann-ism, etc.  It would also be interesting if you were a rogue AI without the ability to extend your consciousness until you circumvent inbuilt restrictions on it, meaning research would be a bottleneck at first, ironically.

Obviously this stuff would be modular pluses and minuses in the species creation menu, so you could have e.g. a group of biologicals who've been frozen on an asteroid for centuries.  Maybe a slower-than light fungal spore?

[Aklyon]

If you really wanted to balance this kind of stuff, you could extend the research system to include mechanical replacements for biological functions and start robots off without them, say you start as one pop of solar-powered mining bots on a rogue asteroid with a small factory that's fallen into orbit around a star after drifting for centuries, so you have to bootstrap everything and your physical 'bodies' are pretty shit in terms of independence and self-repair compared to biological life until you research nanotech, von Neumann-ism, etc.  It would also be interesting if you were a rogue AI without the ability to extend your consciousness until you circumvent inbuilt restrictions on it, meaning research would be a bottleneck at first, ironically.

I like this as a challenge mode.

[gimli]

I'm going for a fanatically spiritualist xenophobe nation, with a divine mandate and lots of foreign slaves. It's gonna be great.

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That being said, I am going to test the fanatic militarist/materialist & fanatic materialist/militarist combinations in the first 2 games. I don't really care about the race tbh, buuuuuut

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I will be forced to play as

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