Alien Start

[Stan]

It's about time don't you think?

[debott]

I believe a proper alien campaign would be cool.

The emphasis here is on 'proper', and I do not believe that is worth the additional development time.

As it stands, playing as the aliens would be so easy that it would be boring. That in itself is not a big problem because playing as this faction would be optional... until you consider critics and game reviews, who'll inevitably claim that 'playing as this game faction is boring and therefore the game is bad'. And I am not even making things up here as this is exactly what already happened when pro-alien factions (in particular protectorate) became available.

[Tikigod]

The interesting thing about a alien campaign would that it would essentially be playing the game in reverse to a human faction.

You start off in space, with ships and limited production facilities.

Your early game is rapidly building new outposts, resource mining operations and production facilities.

You then begin ramping up ship production.

Eventually you make your way to Earth and begin to deploy agents on the surface using expendable ships, and start to try and infiltrate control points.

With your eventual end game focus being 90% on territorial control on Earth and micromanaging dozens of countries and agents whilst periodically focusing back on space for a few minutes just to try stomp pesky human attacks.


Given the amount of people saying they find the early earth phase of the game slow and boring, I'm not sure how many would actually really enjoy a true Alien campaign that would take that early game principle and make it 10 times more micromanagement involved and drawn out as the entirety of your end game goal.

[Stan]

I think it would be probably the most picked Faction I tell ya.
Game Rocks.

[CaptainSpacetime]

They have to build in the same "hate meter" constraints somehow.

100% players while whine and moan about how it's not fair that they can't just attack the human factions.

Hey it's 2027 and I've build up a big alien fleet, but when I get to Earth it says something about a meter isn't high enough? The stupid AI isn't even trying to attack me for some reason so now I'm soft-locked and can't do anything. Is this normal or is this game just trash? I know it's early access but this is pretty ♥♥♥♥.

No I haven't played an human factions, humans are boring and everyone buys this game to play as the aliens.

[Tikigod]

Originally posted by CaptainSpacetime:

They have to build in the same "hate meter" constraints somehow.

100% players while whine and moan about how it's not fair that they can't just attack the human factions.

Hey it's 2027 and I've build up a big alien fleet, but when I get to Earth it says something about a meter isn't high enough? The stupid AI isn't even trying to attack me for some reason so now I'm soft-locked and can't do anything. Is this normal or is this game just trash? I know it's early access but this is pretty ♥♥♥♥.

No I haven't played an human factions, humans are boring and everyone buys this game to play as the aliens.

Wouldn't really need to really replicate the threat meter itself.

A better approach would be to do something like tie the alien factions logistical capacity to support ships/outposts to the scale of the threat posed collectively by human factions.

So until one human faction poses a big threat, or multiple factions pose a moderate threat, then the logistical capacity playing as the aliens would be prohibitive to just building a giant war fleet early on in the game.

Especially when what limited logistical capacity you do have would really be needed to establish your mining and production facilities before you could even think about mass producing ships.

[Stan]

That's for sure it would be a whole new ball game for sure.
I go crazy the pull something like that off.

[Ericus1]

I will say the same thing I've said before in the innumerable times this has been brought up: The devs have unequivocally stated that this will never, ever happen. The game mechanics are simply not designed for it. It would be like asking to play as the bank in Monopoly - a patently absurd request on its face.

Additionally, given the focus on real physics and realistic behaviors TI aims for, fake constraints on a alien player merely to hold them back are never going to fly. A human controlled alien faction would simply build a gunship, fly to Earth, and blow everything humans tried to build out of space while bombarding the planet to ashes. There is absolutely zero plausible or rational reason for them to do anything else. Human players wouldn't (and shouldn't) ever be able to get off the ground. Aliens would win the game within the first 6 months of every playthrough, which doesn't really make for a fun campaign.

[ArcticISAF]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

A human controlled alien faction would simply build a gunship, fly to Earth, and blow everything humans tried to build out of space while bombarding the planet to ashes. There is absolutely zero plausible or rational reason for them to do anything else. Human players wouldn't (and shouldn't) ever be able to get off the ground. Aliens would win the game within the first 6 months of every playthrough, which doesn't really make for a fun campaign.

Yup exactly. Just send the lowest tier ship straight at whatever space assets they build, blow it up, who cares if the humans don't like it? There would be no chance at establishing a space economy, as that's the key to actually doing something as humans. Earth can be an ant farm until they're dealt with.