TLDR:
Lost Spire Ship: Remove entirely or make lore-friendly
Devourer Golem: Needs more interesting ways to interact with; presently boring.
Human Resistance Fighters: Pathetic support; needs to be more distinct from marauders
Marauders: Great
Broken Golems: Great, bring back widow and hive
Nanocaust: Great
Macrophage: Great
Dyson Sphere: Great, maybe more lore-friendly and possibility for unique win/lose condition
Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as cool in practice—needs more direct impact
Dark Spire: Cool in theory, not a faction I use a lot so no real feedback.
Zenith Trader: Nice, be interesting with a procedurally generated inventory in addition to its normal stock.
Risk Analyzers: Don’t get all the hate against turtles; add back the AIP floor and call it a day.
General Feedback:
Much of player’s feedback has been focused on improving mechanics, but I want to focus on a less discussed topic—lore. One of the reasons I kept playing classic was that it gave me a sense of a procedurally generated story. The champion missions, fallen spire, showdown devices, nomad planets, and the story-based objectives (to name a few) all contributed to this feeling that I was playing a unique campaign driven by an underlying “universe” (in the sci-fi world-building sense). Basically, I don't want this game to feel so much as procedurally generated as it feels like a "choose your own adventure." Rouge-likes, imo, lose replayability when they over-emphasize procedural generation at the expense of plot. To this end, my critique on minor factions will focus on promoting lore-building (and general things to make them more fun)
Minor Factions:
Lost Spire Ship: A whole faction dedicated to a single ship, without any lore, is frankly a waste of a faction. I would ditch this faction altogether, at least until it has a lore-friendly theme. I suggest ditching this because it presently adds nothing unique and by that fact alone makes the Spire just another ingredient haphazardly thrown into the AI War mixing bowl.
If there was some sort of special objective tied with freeing the Spire ship, that would go a long way to making it more interesting (maybe it’s defended by insane spirelings? IDK)
Devourer Golem: I think this faction is somewhat boring because it is predictable, exploitable, and inconvenient. I think this faction needs a way to interact with it—ideally turn this into a win/lose condition unto itself.
Human Resistance Fighter: Currently offers pathetic support; otherwise this faction is AI wars with training wheels (which isn’t a bad thing). Would be ideal to have these units more distinguishable from marauders.
Marauders: These guys are great, probably need some balance tweaking but otherwise in a healthy, fun state.
Broken Golems: I love golems, but frankly the game is too easy in its current state to really make a point of using them every game. Would like to see the widow and hive golem back in action.
Nanocaust: Great, if somewhat imbalanced. If I ever get serious I would love to create a variant that substitutes the hydra mechanic for zombification. Would like to see more lore associated with the Nanocaust (if only in the form of mission objectives like classic).
Macrophange: Great, this faction is pretty unique. Some balance issues but reserving judgment for when they scale with AIP.
Dyson Sphere: Great, I’m glad they have their own unique units and have more ways to interact with them (e.g. hacking). Still haven’t seen Dyson Antagonizers in action (don’t think they are in the game yet), but that sounds like a cool mechanic. Think it’s still worth developing this faction further to build upon its lore and open up a unique win/lose condition (what do they do with all that energy??)
Astro trains: Cool in theory, not as interesting in practice. Too many of the depot effects are indirect and it doesn’t really feel like it’s contributing to gameplay (although it very well may).
There needs to be more of a causal factor (oh, this unexpected wave is because of the train). I would like a “pain train” (that a depot eventually spawns) that targets your hw and releases a ton of drones when it gets to your hw or if it dies in transit)
Moreover, there should be a reward for killing trains (it would be awesome if you killed enough trains you get enough “parts” to build a superweapon, like your own dire guardian).
Also, my last game I rarely encountered a train (on 7), even though I kept stations alive in my territory. There should probably be a penalty associated for keeping stations alive so players can’t just cheese where trains go, although in my game that didn’t really occur—might be buggy)
Dark Spire: I honestly don’t use this faction because it clashes hard with my playstyles, but I do like the concept of it and will give this faction more attention. I hope this faction has unique interactions with the Spire when that becomes a thing.
Zenith Trader: Nice faction to have for the possibility of getting unique and powerful goodies. It would be nice if there was a way to summon it to one of the worlds you want said goodies, perhaps at the expense of making that planet targeted by the AI.
Risk Analyzers: As the game is too easy in its current state, this faction is imbalanced. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. AIP floor would go a long way to prevent endless turtling and perhaps letting non-player risk analyzers generate threat (or something like that) based on how many times it has consecutively gone off (so that it scales into the late game and doesn’t destroy you the first time they all go off)
