Discussion regarding Gamespy gameplay preview

I really like the extra faction details more than anything. Especially the part about the TEC Rebels being compared to a xenophobic mob. At first it sounded like it was only a division in TEC military command about the best way to win the war (wait it out or go on the attack). Now it seems we maybe getting a bit more background on the actual citizens of the TEC, who don't seem to like all the decades of warfare the Vasari and Advent put them through.

There is one thing that got my interest, the new TEC capital, given it's own domination ability, way cool.

But telling us what it can do but not showing us the vessel itself is cruel. If thay had shown us and not told anthing thing we could have spent months questioning what it could do.

I got a feeling i'll be a TEC Loyalest first, i kinda turtle

They actually accidentally leaked the description of it and all the other new capitalships in a string file in diplomacy several months ago. Hence why its no surprise for me. At the time I think it was called  a Vera class destroyer but according to Yarlen the early names rarely stay. Its description mentioned it specialized in boarding operations.

I'll probably go with the TEC Loyalists as well since I love being able to lock down chokepoints, especially with the new Occupation game mode.  Hopefully we can get a team vs. team version of it for simply massive team on team orbital battles.

The faction I will be playing first will probably be the Vasari Loyalists (because I really love the idea of being able to survive without any planets) or the TEC Loyalists (becaue I like their titan the most of all the ones I have seen so far).

I am interested to see how the corvettes factor into combat. Not much has been said about them, so I wonder what role they will fulfill. We know they are more of a harassment and support unit, but that doesn't mean much. 

I also want to see how these new capital ships operate. I am afraid they may become a rush cap because they can take over enemy ships, but we will see. There is a counter to everything. The devs are also polishing it up so these new ships will probably have an inherent weakness. 

Pirates will probably end up not attacking either player and either falling back to neutral status or fall under the control of the first faction to research it. I get that pirates will not be much threat to the Rebel TEC due to their higher offensive style unless they are used in a guerrilla attacks. 

First race I will be playing as: Advent, probably Rebels. Advent have so many fun abilities and hopefully they become more powerful economically. Their planets automatically spread culture though, which could become a real pain. That said, it sounds like all the races will be fun to play as now. 

At first I wanted to play the Advent Rebels first but now I'm thinking the Advent Loyalists might be more my style.  Automatically spreading culture should be nice boost starting out and I'm glad there will be a way to take planets over (versus just overthrowing them) with their titan.

but all the factions look fun and much more different from each other.  

One thing I am worried about is that there hasn't been any mention of faction specific units accept for the titans. I was hoping that say the TEC Rebels could get an even more offensive LRM variant with say an extra missile pod with research that would change the mesh like structures and starbases do. Even if it was only one such unit per faction it would be a nice way to diversify militarily instead of blanket research upgrades (I.e. 2 starbases per gravity well).

Even though I don't play multiplayer much, from that preview, some match ups seem like they could be interesting to play and possibly powerful combinations.  Imagine TEC Loyalists and rebels on a team. Rebels quickly remove milita from the choke points by allying with them while the loyalists colonize and build up defenses. Later the loyalists bombard with novaliths behind their defensive lines while the rebels follow up with a combined pirate and non-pirate fleet attack. With 6 factions, and teams of 4, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun. It makes me want to give multiplayer a try again with rebellion.

My first play through will be using the vasari loyalists because they sound like they have the most dramatic change in the way they play and I like the idea of a mobile ship becoming the most important thing to protect instead of a static planet.

More than likely everyone will pick TEC Rebels or other offensive faction and rush you even faster with the extra cash and pirate ships. The loyalists would be awesome in the eco spot where their early novaliths will be a big deal in providing support to the front lines, but in a 1v1 match usually the more offensive player wins.

Now maybe those friendly territory bonus will be enough to discourage anyone from fighting them in their own territory, but the offensive player will probably get more planets and thus win the war of attrition no matter how many starbases the loyalists can build.

I for one am interested in seeing how moddable Titans are, and what they can do and entail. There's a serious amount of potential there, and I'm very interested in seeing how it goes. Also interested in seeing if you can have multiple Titan types per faction, like you can with capital ships, or just one. Edit: Bah, Lavo here, forgot to log out of this account.

I am going with Vasari Loyalists, for sure. I always liked Vasari the most, but now, if their Titan is really a combination of ID4 mothership and something along the lines of Vorlon Planetkiller from B5, they will be truly beyond epic. 

If it were one on one, the TEC loyalists would probably have to do more hit-and-run attacks in order to keep up the pressure in the beginning.  I wonder if they'll get better eco bonuses (from research) so that they can do more with less.  but I agree it would probably be an uphill battle for them and they might have to rely on novalithing border worlds in order to take them (or just homeworld depending on victory conditions so that could make things interesting).

now i'm also thinking if one of the advent factions will get the deliverance engine earlier as well.  it's been kind of lackluster in the past but a smaller investment could change the cost/benefit calculation (performance tweaks aside).

I imagine that the TEC rebels will get to use the Cutthroat on loan from the pirates, which I've always wanted for some weird reason (maybe just because I couldn't have it).  I am also hoping for some visual differentiation somewhat analagous to the idea that the Pirates have been the "TEC rebels" in past games and most of their ships are based on the TEC but have spikes, which are always cool.

Culture or the deliverance engine need to be reworked to make it really worth the title "Superweapon". Sure if its really early the 25% damage buff is decent, but the culture affect almost never does lasting damage locally.

Yeah I think the TEC rebels will get to use all the pirate ships, whether by building them or more likely getting a certain amount for free periodically. The pirates are from TEC space so its only naturally that they have similar looking ships.

i like the idea of free culture spread from planets because in the current game you have to put down 2 harmony temples to get the culture temple for the extra 10% allegiance at your hw, the bonuses for the other colonies and the boost to resource extraction. 

This means you could go straight to hostility temples and start producing flak to illuminators that benefit from the new military buffs to culture.

Indeed, but I hope this doesn't lead them to ignore helping culture in general. Just because its good for the faction that doesn't need anything to get it doesn't mean its not terrible for everyone else.

They won't ignore culture because of this planet element and I'm sure the culture temple remains and so do the star-base upgrades.

No I'm sure you can still build culture centers. I just think culture is very underpowered and needs to be improved in general, for all factions.

Seems they finally figured out how to replace planetary mesh with dead roid.

I just want to see how we can mod it and for that, I want to see the tech-tree at work and know if there is any research in it that disables other items.

I think one of the slightly older interviews mentioned the advent getting special bonuses from culture and you don't want to let them get too much.  It's possible that Advent factions will get really nice bonuses but for the others it will mainly be to to defend against enemy culture, particularly Advent.

How do we know the free culture isn't the bonus they were talking about? And I think the other factions should have worthwhile culture, if a bit more expensive and maybe not quite as useful.

Could be, and I do agree should culture should justify itself on its own merits, while t is appropriate for Advent to get a little more out of it. 

The answers are so close.