Xenomass should be the unique ressource for [B]purity[/B], not harmony!

[Tomice]

As you sure have noticed, the game has wilderness zones, where forests are dense, miasma is on almost every tile and aliens roam in huge packs. This is where large parts of the xenomass is found.

Right now, Harmony are the only affinity actually having a reason to go there (if other, easier-to-settle terrain is available). They need the Xenomass!

Wouldn't it make more sense for purity to be the ones "harvesting" alien nests, cutting down those forests and removing the miasma - then terrascaping the scorched earth?


What if the 3 unique ressources would have the following roles:

• Purity has to kill all the aliens to get their desired "biofuel" (=Xenomass), which powers their conventional, conservative steampunk war machine.
• Harmony needs Firaxite, a misterious bio-crystal that helps domesticating aliens through mind-control.
• Only Supremacy bothers to use the hard-to-implement floatstone, considered fascinating, but too dangerous and complicated for practical use by other factions.

This way, harmony would be the faction most likely to leave the aliens alive, as it should be. They could have even given harmony buildings and improvements that allow them to keep forests intact, making them settle in the wilderness without destroying it.

 

[1SDANi]

Very good points, it's a simple change that greatly affects the game as a whole. This is definitely worth at least some consideration by the team.

 

[Tomice]

Might actually be a very easy-to-do mod (for someone who knows what he's doing):

1. Switch floatstone and xenomass in the resource distribution script
2. Change look back so tiles don't look weird
3. Rename ressources to "Float Nectar" and "Mindstone" to explain why purity still has floating units and why harmony needs stones to control aliens.
4. Done

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Harmony is trying to biologically alter themselves to be more like the indigenous life and even breed or engineer their own alien lifeforms. It makes far more sense for them to need a native biological compound for that than it is for them to need a rock.

 

[KiNg_]

I agree with Minor Annoyance, the xenomass has the dna of all the alien life of the planet in it. That lets them breed their new aliens. What would purity do with alien ?

 

[Tomice]

Just forget how the ressources are called right now, that's not the point.

My message is this: Harmony should not be the affinity that profits most from slaughtering aliens!

In the "Avatar" movie, there is an extremely valuable ressource the humans want to have. The problem is: The natives tend to settle around the holy trees that grow on each deposit. So the humans have to slaughter alien life to get the substance.

Wouldn't it make more sense if clearing/destroying alien nests was something purity and/or supremacy need to do? Not harmony?

 

[KiNg_]

You don't have to kill aliens to get xenomass, and there is a building that gives you xenomass for having nests in your territory

 

[Ayeshteni]

I agree. I have played two games, one as a supremacist PAC where I killed the grand total of 1 alien (a siege worm) and my second game was as the Kavithran Protectorate.

In that game I had firaxite around my capital so I thought it would be another supremacist game. But lo, there was two large xenomasses around 8 tiles to the south. So decided to go harmony.

Cue a couple cities founded to the south which required a mass-extinction of the xeno-population around these two xenomasses so that I could get my colonists safetly down there and build wells on the xenomasses.

Just didn't feel right. I know why they have it as it is, just seems oxymoronic that 'harmony' equals 'xenocide'.

Activating the Mind Flower for the harmonic transcendence victory also means you'll be burning the native lifeforms for a few turns as well.

Aye.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Sure but unlike Avatar, you're not a native and it could be 100 years before you can create an alien body for yourself. I think preserving alien life is more of an end goal rather than part of the process. First they have to harvest the alien life to change themselves to function on the planet as well as a native species can. Then they can let them be. Supremacy will pave the planet over as needed and the natives can get by with what's left. Purity will replace the whole planet's ecosystem when they are done. The difference is in the goal not the means. Everyone meets their goal by carving out a piece of the planet for themselves. Only harmony cares if there is anything left for the aliens.

Abraham Lincoln once said "The constitution is not a suicide pact" meaning living up to ideals is no good if it destroys the country. If harmony doesn't win then the aliens all die. They can either kill some to defend the ecosystem as a whole, or let them die for nothing.

 

[HandyVac]

There should certainly be something to make Purity/Supremacy factions want to slaughter aliens and exploit the Xenomass... but it also makes sense that Harmony should want to copy the native lifeforms by living near Xenomass pools without harming the ecosystem.

I'd prefer to leave Xeno as the reseource required for Harmony uniques, but also add a secondary non-harmony use for it to make it desirable to all factions.

edit: for that matter it'd be good if all three affinity resources had an off-affinity use, all the more reason to fight your neighbours instead of trading peacefully with them.

 

[KiNg_]

Other factions do have use for it, many buildings require nearby xenomass such as the clone station or whatever it's called

 

[Minor Annoyance]

And those buildings are low level harmony. Everyone gets the lover levels of all affinities eventually. Sometimes you get them evenly before making commitment to one.

 

[bhavv]

Harmony has nothing to do with being peaceful towards aliens, its more about exploiting their abilities and controlling native life.

And you don't need to clear the alien nests to access the xenomass after they become friendly.

 

[KiNg_]

Yeah being peaceful with the aliens is an end-goal. They have to slaughter a few to get there but the end justifies the means

 

[Bandobras Took]

There are options for peaceful Harmony alien play, they just aren't instantly obvious.

On a side note, though, I kind of like that the Harmony victory condition pisses all the aliens off.

 

[Ryoga]

First: You don't need to kill aliens at all to gain access to Xenomass.

Second: Anyone can benefit from Xenomass, it has the best tile yield in the game, a Purity faction has all the reason to try to get it.

Third: While Harmony loves aliens they aren't tree crazed lovers or "naturalists". Their main agenda is bioengineering on a large scale, splicing alien DNA into humans and creating artificial biological monstrosities.
They like aliens, but they like their biological experiments more. See "Genetic Entanglement", a Harmony affinity quest that requires you to kill 3 aliens.

 

[terraslayer]

IMO it would make MUCH more sense if they would switch purity's 1st effect to harmony. To me it makes no sense at all why for purity, which to me is to kill all aliens, and they would not attack any purity scouts. This leads to the eventual scout stealthily killing nests. That to me is just plain dumb. It would make more sense if they went to harmony, seeing as they are trying to fit in with the planet. So they would be less likely to use scouts to kill nests.

 

[KiNg_]

If I was playing harmony I'd love an invulnerable unit to snipe nests that I can expand to. Purity kills aliens because aliens aren't like anything from earth so they have to go

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I think the names of the affinities are throwing people off. Harmony isn't pacifist and supremacy aren't conquerors. They clearly wanted names that sounded like a philosophy and ended in 'y', instead of calling them bioengineering, cybernetics, and terraforming.
A better way to think of harmony factions is like high tech native Americans. They still use animals as a resource used for their own well-being, but they acknowledge the large moral differences between using a rock for a tool and using an animal horn. Also there is the element of desperation. They fled a dying planet and they don't yet know if they're going to survive. They'd see removing an alien nest as a necessary evil, while others would just consider it a necessity.