This was originally a response to the following comment from the "Early Game Feeling Unbearably Slow" thread, but it spiraled off so much I didn't think it belonged there.

Originally posted by saessence:

After a couple of runs as Empire, CSA, Pentastar and some early Zsinj shenanigans, I have to say the pace of progression is okay and you can still abuse it to some point just in other ways than before.

New Republic have been steamrolling everything though in every campaign, with very aggro moves like making legit tentacle-strides into enemy territory while factions like Maldrood or PA seem to be really passive regardless of your start area, and Eriadu can't do anything about NR as well, they just sit in a era1-era4 stalemate in starting borders until NR wipes them out.

IDK what to do about it, since it's pretty true in lore as well. Also hope for a bit more characters that appear on era progression for CSA (and for less characters in starting Hapes fleet since they get everyone on the first day which makes their late game kinda unrewarding).

I agree that the early progression doesn't feel too bad, it's the late progression that doesn't feel good. I mean this both in terms a late game from early starts, and outright starting in later eras - Since you can actively lose out on a lot of content if you're playing an Imperial faction, or can lose enemies and map diversity if you're not. For example Zsinj doesn't exist at all in era 3+ starts, and if you start in era 2 he's consumed the CSA, meaning that to play with every faction on the map you NEED to start in era 1. This is essentially true of EA as well since they're reduced to one planet and pitiful forces in 3+ starts, though in that case they at least have the potential to make an allstar comeback. It feels like such a waste of all the hard work in making all the new maps for each era and galaxy size. But Zsinj in particular I think needs some big changes.

If you want to play a warlord faction, it seems like you pretty much have to start in era 1, 2, or 3. Because if you start in era 4, or fail to get Dark Empire, there goes your regime progression for the rest of the game. And they don't have any individual unlocks or upgrades without that, I'm pretty sure. So if that happens it's just a matter of organizing your basic fleets, praying for legitimacy units, and trying to maybe integrate any remaining factions, which can be especially painful now with the Warlord changes.

The other factions have similar issues, but ironically less since their government systems aren't as fleshed out. NR has huge, huge gaps of time in the eras where nothing changes, for example after unlocking the New Class and Viscount, I think it's like 8 YEARS until you can do your next research, which is just painting the Errant Venture red. And then after that it's like another DECADE until you can do Mediator research, it's frankly baffling that it's so late into 22ABY. I definitely think the New Republic needs a revamp to bring them to a similar level of complexity as the Imperial factions, with overhauls to their election system, how the command staff works, and the number of heroes you can unlock to your roster overall.

For example, adding the FotR mission and influence system could be a start. You do missions to get unique units, then maybe you get a call from a certain planet that wants to join the NR, and if you capture it you get hero units associated with that planet. But whatever they do, the faction desperately needs more dynamism - Even just the canon units option in the latest update was a breath of fresh air.

Aside from them, I know EotH and Hapes are supposed to be getting changes and government additions soon. And I don't know what's planned for the Hutts. That just leaves the CSA, which currently at least has the ship market adding some variation to their campaigns. While a more dedicated government mechanic for them would be good, I think an interesting change to the market would be to add the units of defeated factions to the roster of potential ships that can show up, which of course gives further incentive to get out there and crush the competition. Frankly I think all factions should have mechanics that interact with the other factions in some regard. The New Republic and Hapans, for example, were often tied at the hip for one reason or another. These sorts of things should get some mechanical consideration, especially since as the story goes on into the Vong war and especially the GFFA era the lines between factions start to get really blurry.

Obviously the game has no diplomacy system whatsoever, but I wish they could figure something out. As I said before, Zsinj/the CSA is another point that could benefit from some creative use of game systems. Say for example if you were to be able to unlock some research which doubles as ""diplomacy"", which simply makes another faction's AI ignore invading you, so they instead go after other targets, that's a loose enough simulation of two factions being "allied". But I think they've said before that the AI doesn't really have the ability to distinguish between other factions in this way.

Maybe an expansion on the corruption system in FoC? Specifically the ability to pass through enemy territory at the cost of credits. So say if the New Republic wants to attack Zsinj, they can just pass through the Hapes Cluster instead of having to fight them. Even something like this could make maps much more dynamic. Say if the CSA wanted to conquer Maldrood without getting into it with Zsinj, or if the Pentastar Alignment wanted to be gud bois and attack the New Republic without first conquering the entire core Imperial territory. Of course it would be best if this was only enabled for certain combinations of factions, since one would think the NR would never let EA for example just fly through their borders. Depending on the depth to the implementation, you could even have scenarios where the feature is only unlocked under particular flags, such as the EotH only being able to pass through Empire territory if Thrawn is the leader, or passage through Corellian territory only being possible by the Empire in early eras, but then the New Republic in later eras (post Grand Admiral death). Something like this would dramatically shake up the game and add a lot more variations for replayability, but I don't know the degree to which it's even possible.

Well, what does anyone else think? I got to rambling a bit, but am I on to anything with any of these issues?