Starchildren to plain?

[Cormac]

maybe i'm missing any great features of them, but as far as i'm now, all i see is "removed Buildings" and "added Motherships", and all i can feel while playing as them is the removal of many features like civil&state buildings, any need for manage the preasure as well as the need for artifical planets and the ring world... and instead, giving some "moveable uncaptureable planets to build"

i don't know if it's even posible, but instead of having "motherships" as ships, why not make them similar to the artifical planets, in the size of maybe a moon (maybe somewhat bigger), and 1 time upgradeable, instead of just trading recources from your planets to planets, you want to move those to your mothership(s) to get them growing.
give them a starchild-only building to make them shoot, maybe add researchable motherships with special recources (read: specialized motherships which gets a scaleable recource to increase production/money/etc)

again, maybe i'm just missing the point, but at least for me, they feel to plain

[Astasia]

Huh? They have the most unique playstyle in the game.

Not being able to build structures drastically changes how they play, as does them ignoring pressure caps. The habitats they build can be fairly powerful defense, with a whole mess of unique faction techs devoted to making them stronger. They are close to like 100k strength each by the time you research all them and some other techs that help, giving high level planets millions of essentially free defense. The mothership is a powerful early mobile construction platform, able to create ships on demand where they are needed, while other factions have to wait until much later in the game to get the same thing at anywhere near the same strength.

If you want to talk about a faction that is "too plain" it would be the Saar, with just one orbital that increases influence and income a bit.

[Dalo Lorn]

Hah, I was thinking about this same thing today.

Astasia: He's complaining about the fact that the Star Children aren't as nomadic as their Motherships - or their lore - would seem to suggest. You still need to colonize planets, you're still dependent in every way on planetary resources...

On the other hand, without some tie to planets and their resources, it becomes difficult to give them any meaningful, half-realistic economy. The Cargo system may provide a solution to the problem, but this would come at the cost of making them a highly micro-intensive race and/or making them super-OP. (Which, I suspect, is why the devs chose to anchor them more permanently to a planet.)

[Cormac]

it's not only that.... i'Ve put in some more hours into the star children.

yes, i agree they seems to be the most unique race in game, but when boiling it down to the facts, it sounds less that way.

what is different to other races?

no on planet construction, instead, you get moveable, designable shipyard (you export from planet tz shipyard having them in orbit, lowering your desire to move the shipyard, ehm, mothership that often)
no onworld colonies, instead having them in habitats, in other words: your worlds get some free defence ships not transferable to your capital ships
some researchdifferences, more to make those work with your "colonie style"
instead of colonising from planet to planet, you have to move your mothership to the planet

features that were removed:
preasure&civil buildings.... some ppl may not like that feature, but still, it's one that was removed from them
state buildings... all of them, no food/watersupplies, no research, no nothing
((( didn't bother to go the route, but does the artifical planet makes any sense to build at all? )))
Moons....

features available that are useless/makes no sense:
all the wonders. why building a great mall on a planet and not on your (most important) motherships?
the 'moveable platform'-artifact.... why even bother
why trading from planet to planet to "build up" your planets, but noone cares for the civilians on your mothership... they have to life in poverty?


i may have missed something, but as you can see, there are no realy new features (read: moveable shipyards are more like a bonus than a complete new feature... yes, they have population, but the game does not realy do anything special with them) instead, they have way more removed/useless things player have (not) access to than anything realy new.
instead, the starchildren seems to be way to close to other races, as dalo said, it may be for balancing reasons, but still, there may be other ways to balance the race

edit: as a side question.... when they build their habitats near a planet, basicly settling down anyway..... please, why don't they at least build (maybe drone powered) buildings on the surface? is the ground holy? and if so, how do they get the resources off there anyway? no farms on the surface? no mines?

[Astasia]

Most of this game doesn't make any sense, from the economy system, to the planet tree, to the card game diplomacy. They've opted for trying to come up with unique gameplay systems rather than follow standard logic. This means it's a very different game than any other 4x, which can be a bit refreshing to play, but it also means you have to ignore a lot of the glaring logic holes.

The faction traits in the game were one of the last things added, none of them are very deep. Maybe if we give them time they will flesh them out a bit more, it took GalCiv2 several expansions to make somewhat interesting and diverse factions. Star Children/Nylli are currently the most interesting to play though, even if they don't make any sense. The other factions are far more "plain."

[myrath]

I tried them too and found I missed stuff as well.. Couldn't invest in more research buildings etc etc. The concept is nice. But limiting IMHO.
Also... I did a game vs 22 AI's.... and it was quite a hassle to keep all the worlds populated.

[kinngrimm]

I haven't tried it yet, but i guess it will not be possible to build Gates within mothership disigns, then it would make much more sense to me to play such a combination so that the in any case already moveable gates could become a part of the Star Childreens motherships and perhaps as small extra perk, would not need an opening at both side walls like in the normal station/gate design, but perhaps would need a donut shaped form with an inner area needed to be left out. That again would fit nicely later on with the research of the graviton engine =)

[Syzy]

I'm Current theory on how to win as star child is to fly off to the void, rename themselves void lords, and lurk in dark space building more motherships as they snowball population.
Edit* Starchildern not have a pop cap of 16 for their ships, generating a peak of 240k monies, making it not possible to exist soley on ships :(

[Dalo Lorn]

Archon, your edit is incorrect. It is in fact possible to make some minimal profit out of a carefully designed Mothership, and I have already done so in the past.

However... the concept is still flawed. Vacuum Telescopes make it possible for the ships to be detected, and it'd take a few ingame days before you had enough of an income to build any meaningful fleets.

[Salmuc Neriza Andrac]

Hey does anyone know to generate research as star children? Is it the singularity labs? If so, what if no black holes form?

[Dalo Lorn]

Singularity Labs are available to any lifestyle. Your primary sources of Research for any race are Research pressure from resources such as Chemicals, Degenerate Matter or the like, and the Research-related 'welfare' option. (The latter defaults to Influence, and can be selected using the button next to your budget indicator.)

Your post suggests that you're used to spamming Research Labs - this is a very inefficient tactic due to the impact it has on your empire's budget. Believe me, if they were crucial to proper gameplay, the Nylli would have an orbital form of the Research Lab. :P

Also, I'd like to note that my post above is no longer valid, as there is now a minimum maintenance of §300k for every Mothership.

[hellatze]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Most of this game doesn't make any sense, from the economy system, to the planet tree, to the card game diplomacy. They've opted for trying to come up with unique gameplay systems rather than follow standard logic. This means it's a very different game than any other 4x, which can be a bit refreshing to play, but it also means you have to ignore a lot of the glaring logic holes.

The faction traits in the game were one of the last things added, none of them are very deep. Maybe if we give them time they will flesh them out a bit more, it took GalCiv2 several expansions to make somewhat interesting and diverse factions. Star Children/Nylli are currently the most interesting to play though, even if they don't make any sense. The other factions are far more "plain."

oh wait, i feel i see that profile picture somewhere :p.