Unfallen has "fallen" behind in terms of faction balance

[Provolonage]

With other lower tier factions getting quest reworks, overall QoL and changes to the sandbox that remove/reduce certain early game hiccups that some factions used to struggle with (I'm looking at you Prompt Pioneering) Unfallen has gotten a few buffs to help them grow but not enough overall to keep up with other faction reworks such as Lumeris and considering they have been a contender for worst faction in the game for while I don't think its bold to say they need some decent buffs to make them enjoyable and competitive.

I'm going to sort of rant off things about the faction that I think should be changed and why, these aren't in any particular order.

1. I Really think Unfallen should be a ecologist primary faction and the Unfallen pop should be Eco primary and pacifist secondary. The main reason for this is that Unfallen's opening is incredibly slow and can only compete with other factions if they get spoon fed fertile temperates that have guardians (Aka not atolls and oceans). Eco main law is the easiest way I can think of that solves this issue cleanly with overhauling all col techs for the entire faction and would fix the issue of the factions entire success being dependent on getting eco primary on turn 10 in a democracy since between the high costs of vineships and the necessity of col techs unfallen spends the first 20 turns of the entire empires industry and science just using 6 col cap. Getting ecologist primary on turn 10 is very rng dependent and is super crucial to the rollout which I think is a really bad place for a faction to be, sure even if they were eco primary they could lose it on turn 10 but it would be harder to lose and the player would have more agency in keeping it and at least 10 turns of the main law every game. The second reason is that there is only one Ecologist main faction in the game making it the most underrepresented party in the sandbox, not really that crucial but would be nice.
2. Vine ships are really really bad, 200 indy base cost +50 more for the vine modules for 250 indy a pop on fast, only 1 support slot for 1 engine and 2 defense slots which you usually never use to keep them cheap. Considering that you generally need 6 of these minimum to play the faction and only start with 1 you can build park and drone networks in the same indy cost. What even more insulting is that an empty eco behemoth costs 180 indy which is 70 less 1 vine ship. My suggested fix would be to lower the hull cost to 150 or make the vine module vine by 20% instead of the 17-19% its currently at, this small change would make it so you only need 5 to one turn systems but still need 3 to 2 turn a system and 2 to 3 turn a system and make one of the defense slots also accept support slots, this especially when paired with eco main law would make unfallen probably expand very very quickly but if that's the case we can just pull back a little bit.
3. Vining is weird and not that enjoyable for the unfallen or anyone else, vines are annoying to setup for unfallen and very annoying to deal/cope/remove as a not unfallen since unfallen's ability to slow down and gaslight other factions is directly tied to their colonization mechanic buffing their ability to spread will also buff their ability to grief to compensate for this I think we should increase vine burn speed from 10% to 20% that scales with game speed (meaning it would be 40% on fast aka 3 turns) and reduce the movement speed penalty by a significant amount. This change should make it so players can weed out the unfallen if they creep into areas they don't belong without holding the faction ability to colonize hostage.
4. Guardians are weird, they singlehandedly can give the entire unfallen empire ecstatic for an entire game or just not exist and being an afterthought. To fix this I think Oceans, Atolls, Mediterraneans and Tundras should all have guardians but the approval on empire per guardian should be reduced to 3 from 5. At this point I want to remind whoever reading this that I don't think all of these changes should be implemented at the same time but that all are options I think would work, because yes making vine ships faster cheaper and letting unfallen skip certain col tech and get more free pop from guardians all combined would make them crazy good at rolling out I do think that by making them more common we could reduce the factions reliance on rng.
5. Core gameplay shortcomings, Unfallen's core gameplay revolves around collecting minor pops and spreading them for bonus yield and collection bonuses and getting the unfallen main pop collection bonus, and there is one thing that constantly get in the way of this, pop slots, having enough pop slots on your systems to have enough pops for all these collection bonuses requires alot of planets which can be hard for a faction with slow expansion and weaker ships to maintain for the entire match, giving unfallen +2 pop slots anomaly would help them out and be a cool lore niche for the faction since they vibe with nature and stuff.
6. Main Quest lacks good rewards, this is pretty straight forward, I'm not 100% sure what I want unfallens quest rewards to be yet but if possible spawning minors on certain systems like how events do sometimes would be cool, combat rng and fit the factions identity and playstyle, if it is possible.
7. Starting hero and hero skills, Unfallen got the short end of the branch with the hero rework in my opinion, not in terms of cool idea but overall power. I think the T1 fleet hp skill should still have some cp scaling to make it more unique and fit the defensive and growing themes of the faction. The Influence skill is very unnecessary as the faction naturally make alot of influence is a democracy so they use less and can't control elections well enough to run alot of high tier laws anyway so its not very good, the HP regen skill looks very cool until you realize that medium hulls do tens of thousands of dps so a few hundred hp a second on the ship being focuses isn't very good, swapping this with the shield absorption skill and buffing the shield skill would make this more of an early mid game fleet skill that could be an interesting way for the faction to fight without trying to buff the power to a point that unfallen fleets refuse death until carriers. Then like they every needed it unfallen have another influence skill and finally the capstone is really neat and fitting but I think it should be +50% since its only on system and should probably work on collection bonuses as well, considering vody has a T3 skill that gives +2 FIDSI so net 10 FIDSI per pop on system and most pops give 4 ish net FIDSI 33% isn't even giving net 2 FIDSI on most pop. Finally considering they start with 2 move engines, mediocre scouts and the massive indy sink that are vineships I think the unfallen starting hero should be a counselor so they can nom curios discover systems and have a real governor without relying on academy rng.
8. I don't have a point 8 but a friendly reminder that Unfallen has naturally higher mp cap on systems so the sim camp nerf does hurt them more then other factions so maybe we can be firmer with the buffs.

[captaincobbs]

Just a note about #3, we are incapable of affecting vine speed burn time in any way.

[Provolonage]

wdym ive seen the variable

[captaincobbs]

You might actually be right, I remember Chaos and I trying to find it a while ago but we never did

[Provolonage]

i think we did it

[wakystuf]

This seems like a good list. My thoughts:

• 1: This seems fine to me if you can convince Cobbs; I think in the past he hasn't wanted to do it and presumably has good reasons that I'm just not thinking of as I'm not as familiar with the faction
• 2: Yeah, seems right; the lowering of the hull cost is the easiest solution and the one which will most cleanly scale with GameSpeed.
• 3: This one is important, for sure, and I think will be key to avoid people (especially Merm) yelling at us. I'd say there are 3 areas of griefing we should resolve: a) As you've already said, burning the vines faster (where is that variable by the way; sounds like you found it?), b) reducing the movement penalty, and/or eliminating it during Cold War, and c) Need a way to mitigate or counterplay vs the diplo pressure created by vines, particularly during peace (I think it's a whopping -8 in Cold War and then -4 during Peace, since it's applying the penalty for being in another's sphere of influence--kind of ruins the "cooperative/friendly vines" theory).
• 4: Yeah this one could be good, but I'd prob skip for now to see how other things settle. The spawn part may or may not be moddable anyway; I'm not sure. I don't dislike this change, but just think it's lower-priority than the others.
• 5: Seems fine. I think Cobbs loved this idea, which is a good indicator. Would thematically synergize with point 1 since anomaly exploitation is an ecologist mechanic. Potentially could include this as a reward on the Ecologist branch of the quest (prob replacing the 50 random T3 lux), which would help with the next point too.
• 6: Yeah, for starters we should make the unique terraforming into Forest apply to more planet types (ex: Ice, Swamp and Arid). What do Heart's Ward, Heart's Hammer, Center of Light and Life, Harmony of the Heart, and Renewal System do? We could presumably buff those.
• 7: Yeah some of this is fair. We can replace the first influence skill with something else (food would be most ecologist-themed, or dust would be most pacifist themed--either could work). I'd leave the fleet health skill alone; it's already as good as what Guardians get, and their tree is one of the strongest for fleet combat. We can buff the capstone from 33% to 50%, yeah. That's a good point about the repair skill; however, I'd leave the shield skill alone, since if you move it to T3 then you're just going to need to come up with a new T2. So really the question is: what should replace the T3 (bearing in mind that it's their senator skill)? Also, remind me what their starting hero is currently? I think anything other than a Seeker should be fine; if they currently have a Guardian or Overseer then I'd prob just leave it alone.
• 8: Yeah, fair.

[Provolonage]

This seems like a good list. My thoughts:

• 1: This seems fine to me if you can convince Cobbs; I think in the past he hasn't wanted to do it and presumably has good reasons that I'm just not thinking of as I'm not as familiar with the faction
• 2: Yeah, seems right; the lowering of the hull cost is the easiest solution and the one which will most cleanly scale with GameSpeed.
• 3: This one is important, for sure, and I think will be key to avoid people (especially Merm) yelling at us. I'd say there are 3 areas of griefing we should resolve: a) As you've already said, burning the vines faster (where is that variable by the way; sounds like you found it?), b) reducing the movement penalty, and/or eliminating it during Cold War, and c) Need a way to mitigate or counterplay vs the diplo pressure created by vines, particularly during peace (I think it's a whopping -8 in Cold War and then -4 during Peace, since it's applying the penalty for being in another's sphere of influence--kind of ruins the "cooperative/friendly vines" theory).
• 4: Yeah this one could be good, but I'd prob skip for now to see how other things settle. The spawn part may or may not be moddable anyway; I'm not sure. I don't dislike this change, but just think it's lower-priority than the others.
• 5: Seems fine. I think Cobbs loved this idea, which is a good indicator. Would thematically synergize with point 1 since anomaly exploitation is an ecologist mechanic. Potentially could include this as a reward on the Ecologist branch of the quest (prob replacing the 50 random T3 lux), which would help with the next point too.
• 6: Yeah, for starters we should make the unique terraforming into Forest apply to more planet types (ex: Ice, Swamp and Arid). What do Heart's Ward, Heart's Hammer, Center of Light and Life, Harmony of the Heart, and Renewal System do? We could presumably buff those.
• 7: Yeah some of this is fair. We can replace the first influence skill with something else (food would be most ecologist-themed, or dust would be most pacifist themed--either could work). I'd leave the fleet health skill alone; it's already as good as what Guardians get, and their tree is one of the strongest for fleet combat. We can buff the capstone from 33% to 50%, yeah. That's a good point about the repair skill; however, I'd leave the shield skill alone, since if you move it to T3 then you're just going to need to come up with a new T2. So really the question is: what should replace the T3 (bearing in mind that it's their senator skill)? Also, remind me what their starting hero is currently? I think anything other than a Seeker should be fine; if they currently have a Guardian or Overseer then I'd prob just leave it alone.
• 8: Yeah, fair.

they have a seeker starting hero

[wakystuf]

Hahaha, fair enough.

[NoProblemWithThisAcc]

In order of necessity:

4 YES YES YES (if it's not doable, then that means we can ignore balancing around it, so we should check here first...)

3 (prov said this was doable) um how about instead we give more 'connection points' between the vines. Having to defend the 4 chokepoints (just past your home system, the single wormhole to the middle, the single wormhole out of the middle and where you are currently vining) all game is paintful. With better vine connection points there would only be 3 (your vining fleet and the two wormholes) and with crazy-wide sprawling (like 30% of the map) we could go down to just the vining fleet. Not sure on the asthetics of the latter.

2 Yup, yup!

6 Sure

7 I'm fine with better unfallen hero tree.

1 No unless we do 4,2,6 and then need more buffs. Unfallen are steered toward pacifist rather than ecology because they should be getting guardians. If we allow guardians to 'bud once onto other planets like creep colonies in starcraft II), then there would be good reason for them being fertile-based.

5 nah, but I don't care

8 current. They needed a slight buff to balance that (see point 6). 2,3,4 were long overdue in my opinion

[wakystuf]

OK, I've assigned this to myself; I'll plan to code it at some point. My summary of what I plan to change, unless anyone disagrees (note that these are pretty much all Provo's ideas):

Complete:

• Rework repair hero skill to % health regen (Cobbs said he had something else he needed to do with this one)
• Make the last chapter of the quest actually start
• Change politics to Ecologist/Pacifist
• Lower vineship hull cost from 400 to 300 on Normal
• Reduce Unfallen griefing: a) make vines burn faster, b) reduce movement malus
• Make Heart's Ward cost hyperium instead of antimatter
• Buff capstone hero skill from 33% to 50%
• Make initial seeker hero into a counselor
• Add quest terraformation constructibles for Ice and Arid into Forest
• Replace T2 hero skill with food instead of influence
• Rework Ecologist 3.1 quest objective from 70 approval for 16 turns (on Normal) to 95 approval for 8 turns (which will be 4 on Fast)
• Change Ecologist 3.1 quest reward from 50 random T3 lux to +2 pop slots on planets with >0 anomalies
• Change Scientist 3.1 quest reward from 250 influence to an empire improvement providing bonus empire science per pop collection bonus (major and minor)

Not possible:

• Disable movement malus in Cold War
• Reduce/eliminate diplo pressure from vines
• Make diplo pressure demands only possible if not in alliance or peace

[captaincobbs]

1. I'm fine with one, but I suggest you change the politics accordingly:
   • Population Politics: +Ecologist, -Industrialist, Militarist -> Scientist
   • Senate Politics: Primarily Ecologist, secondarily pacifist, tertiarily scientist
2. How would you feel if we added a tech that allows Unfallen to research invisible vineships (only T1). They don't improve at all late game and are very fragile.
3. 3 turns on fast is legitimately a horrible idea, it'll cause problems with unfallen not being able to use their affinity as it is intended and will shorten the period before they are wiped out. I do think it'd be a good idea to add -20% Siege Manpower Damage to the vine effects though (for allies and self), they need some ability to stand on their own as a defensive faction, but shouldn't receive the manpower bonuses that vaulters do.
4. Even if we made them available on more planet types, only a set number per unfallen player can spawn, I don't think nerfing them would be needed.
5. Absolutely love this idea, no bias
6. Frost seems willing to give some creative quest rewards, I'd urge that we consult him before we do anything crazy
7. By repair hero skill, do you mean the HP regen one? I think it's important to keep it there thematically, but maybe give it another effect, or make it scale somehow? Everything else mentioned seems fine.
8. The sim camp nerf definitely hurts them, they lack any ability to create meaningful industry, especially since they prefer fertile planets. Maybe some unique versions of buildings are in order?

[captaincobbs]

Another thought, maybe change the bonus that the Guardians get? Their approval bonuses really just aren't that interesting, it just gives infinite approval, as provo mentioned.

[captaincobbs]

Also, can we change the guardian guides in some way, you only ever get one so they should be much better than they currently are

[Arpharnator]

but it's a quest gated by rng

[captaincobbs]

My time was wasted reading that quest

[Arpharnator]

why

[captaincobbs]

It doesn't do anything

[Arpharnator]

the quest?