Make him President/Premier Achsan and you might have a winner. Note I go with those two titles because the suit makes him look more like an elected ashhole than a Monarch or Emperor (usually those guys wear a stupid robe) or a dictator (they usually wear a uniform).
Now, the players may very well see President/Premier Achsan as a dictator. He might have been elected to a life term upon his father's death, who previously ruled the country. But he and the Government would officially refer to him as President/Premier.
(FYI, when I think of Prime Ministers, I usually think of old people with bad hairdos. Not exactly scary looking, although several Prime Ministers were in fact pretty scary folks)
Interesting take! I don't think it's too far: There's some context and background as to why things are they way they are (in-universe), such as history of their world always being
very steeped in religion.
Unsurprisingly The Communion (Achsan's faction) being very religious, it acts as sort of a Theocracy. With him being the intermediary between the affairs of the mundane and their deities (chosen by this side and the next), and with the events of the previous "
age" mixing things up, I'd say it'd be close to a Theocratic Dictatorship - even though the word Dictatorship probably brings the wrong picture to mind in some regards, since he's
"chosen by this side and the next".
Just my 2 cents on the characters: The more you let the characters invest in the characters, the less expendable they become. Even customizing their clothes and equipment can create that emotional bond that makes the player slightly less likely to throw them to the grinder. Are cybernetics a thing in your era? Expensive training? Maybe implanting skills, etc via expensive chips?
At least modified and prototype weapons and equipment is something we've discussed a lot since it matches the vision for the universe. Outer Worlds recently kinda hit close (conceptually) to what I wanted a year ago in regards to the
tech-feel, except they went for Fallout, which is not our case. Well, except if you picture things like the Handmade Gauss Rifle and other awkwardly and hastily put together weapons that even though have questionable design and production methods, still get the job effectively done.
Although it's something all of us are very interested in having, at the moment we see it falling under
stretch goals, given the size of our scope already without such features.
Maybe at the end of this dev stage we'll have more clarity to talk about this sort of stuff.
I'd advise prioritizing at least a prototype of the strategic layer. Its the part that is new and unique and needs the most time/testing to flesh out. Which by the way, is pretty interesting. If you can make a strategic layer where the characters get sent off to use their skills and equipment to throw off the opposition, that would be pretty awesome.
There's no hiding things from Bay12ers..
This might take a reasonably long while to get to, though.
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Thank you for the feedback, kind sir! The team is stalking & lurking this forum and thread, so they often get to the replies and discuss/investigate the stuff before I do.
When it comes to research and pawn controls, it's more about having a progression into a less micro-y playstyle through it (and also letting people choose how micro they wanna be). There's not a whole lot that demonstrate that just yet, other than the auto-planting/harvesting and the priority screen. We hope to make the AI less rough (and cooler) over time though, and that wouldn't really be tied to research projects.
And thank you for the bug report - Out of those 3 issues, one is likely already fixed by the crafting logic improvements, and the other two will be looked at and hopefully show up in next week's build!