I said you would bring a high quality  submission and high quality it is. Just as the Tohari were in the good ol' days.

All the best for this voting stage mate.If not then you probably are one of favorites for the visual competition.

Trade was almost not existant in Endless Space One and straight underpowered. Though most of us werent able to test the new trading system yet It is always good to integrate trading mechanics and make it core to at least one major faction in the game. Also to make greater use of ressources (tactical or luxury ones) is always something were the game can benefit as a whole from. And thats the most important part right.

This is really important

Every and one should go and read through Hinin's thread to better understand how I and also, a collective we feel about the voting so far:

"that the conditions in which this contest has been held have made it more a source of disappointment than of joy. In fact, this contest hasn’t only been about quality and effort, it has also encouraged speed of posting, artificial bumping, shady tactics to increase visibility, and not helping others in fear of being sent to the second page."

Check the thread out HERE

If you take the time to read through his post and comments left behind by others. Then, I thank you.

If you can, please upvote his post so it gets greater visibility and share it with others.

Ok i cannot resist, even though its linked up above, here is an initial front shot. I will probably focus on a clothed study/sketch next and maybe in a pose, this took a couple of hours in total but over a few days when I had spare time:

TeddyTi wrote:

Another great faction here! In the theme, with an unique bio and a related and interesting gameplay. Has my vote too. (Didn't you say you were an artist? I want to see your sketches if you don't mind)

All in good time, I have like 0 sketches right now because of recent news of that... I get to go study a HNC in Aircraft Engineering! I was on the clearing list for it and I am super happy i got in, it will be starting at the end of this month so I kind of have to get sorted straight a little first before doing any real sketching.

Don't worry though I will get some sketches done in the next week and if I am allowed at Stage 1 to show "images" then I will post them up. But its sounding like a Stage 2 sort of jive since in there it is "Hero & Ship visuals" where we are allowed to show off reference images and drawings. 

Edit: What I can do for you is show you my most recent sketches for something unrelated to Endless Space which I drew earlier this year, if you check back in a bit Ill post them up in unrelated and link back to it.

With the announcement of The Lumeris, I am probably going to make a change to the affinity/traits and focus on pulling more character from my bio a bit. Ill let you know when I do this  by editing this post here, I might have to mull for a bit.

Edit: It doth is done. Affinity section is worked and subtext will be directing people to Game Design Documents in concern to Laws and Polices in case anyone is not in the loop on these. 

THE AVANT - XENOPHILIC CULTUREPOT MERCHANTS

The Avant are Sea-Dragon (Olm-like) Xenophile Traders. Spacesuit Squiggles? With long flowing bodies, lithe aquatic dwelling folk with long limbs and tail, sporting vibrant colourations and for the most part confined into "aquatic-full body suits" outside of their water based environment; so essentially, they are water-breathers and would be fine outside of water so long as they have a way to breathe the "air", like a rebreather around the "gill" area. 

I also wanted to make use of the new systems we will have access to from the Game Design Documents, (GDDs) and tie it in with the faction, two I focused on was Law and Social Policy.

Anything is subject to change based on feedback. 

Bio: 

Open, accepting and a tiny bit crazy, the vibrant and lithe Avant are a species with a deep fascination of the unknown with a tendency to embrace all within the void.

Hailing from the warm, luscious ocean world Tamun, orbiting twin stars. Boasting rather extreme elevations above and below the waterline, mountain ranges and vast flooded caverns, with flora and fauna as varied as it is vibrant, much like Avant culture.

Avant take great delight in their own diverse mixture of cultures; it is very open to ideas and ways of life which are often accepted and given its own space. Activities such as open conflict and war are considered abhorrent and uncivilized. Acceptance paramount in the society, war is a door opened in exceptional circumstances.

Their society is a place where anything can be conceived, a smorgasbord of many specialties, many skills and many talents together in one bizarre place. Providing they keep themselves to their own boundaries and not step on too many toes. Truly radical behavior is by no means tolerated in common areas.

A new era dawns in which free travel extends into the void; many Avant wonder now, what new marvelous discoveries shall await them?

Affinity: 

The Avant welcome one, every and all to indulge in the nectar of peace and peace in which to trade. War, is surely a farce, but a gallows joke shared at parties. That is until the Cravers burst in said party and try to eat "everything". Then things become a little bit problematic...

Faction affinity: Culturepot

The Avant have access to a bonus system policy available at Era I and require less luxury resources to implement policies. (Social policies are powerful system boosts that consume luxury resources to level up a system which increases max Pop and the bonus of the policy is given to your system for the rest of the game - Social Policies are covered in Game Design Document 7.)

Population bonus: + x system diversity (number of different faction pop sharing a system with you.)

The Other minor trait ideas, assuming factions are built similar to Endless Space 1 with a Major Trait and Minor traits, but It could be more in line with Endless Legend with faction techs:

Conformists: Law support thresholds are lowered. (This means you have access to more laws with less support than normal, this is based on Ideologies within the citizens of your empire like Pacifist, Ecologist and Religious. More advanced laws of certain categories are unlocked with high population supporting that ideological viewpoint. This trait lowers the threshold needed to have access to certain laws. - Laws are covered in Game Design Document 5.)

Absolute Luxury - Receives bonus  &  for each luxury deposit.

Exotic Markets - Receives bonus  &  for each trade route with a different faction. The owners of each Trade route link receive bonus  for the link.

"Mad World": Planet starts with a positive Anomaly - befitting of Tamun.

Political Ideology: 

Pacifists (obviously)

Gameplay:

Due to your bonuses with trade and system diversity you are encouraged to indulge in open borders and bartering with fellow Xeno you encounter. This works best in a state of peaceful affairs, which is in line with your pacifist ideals. Trading with others is more profitable than usual and feeds into your diplomatic power in the form of extra influence and dust, control over luxury resources is important as well as this feeds into the same pool while keeping your people happy, but most importantly it will allow you to benefit from the Social Policy advantage on your systems which will lead to greater population and economy. When it comes down to the basics, you prefer peace because it means trading and with that comes more weight on the political table which allows greater interaction with other factions. With the peace it allows population migration, which is what you want because of the bonus Influence you will get from your population bonus and there will be space for these new migrants because you should have Social Policies implemented in your systems. Going tall, might end up being better than going wide for this faction since you want to upgrade as many systems as possible and make use of the increased pop cap.

Other factions will find it more agreeable to trade with you since there is an added bonus of happy migrants who function better with other and there is more dust to be made through your partnership. Attracting minor and major factions to your colonies will be important and for that to work best there will have to be free travel through peace with another faction. This will lend itself into creating an interesting political sphere on the home turf with most ideologies being presented later on into the game as you discover and interact with other races. Since you are already pacifist, your people would not see war as a fantastic option in most conflicts, any war declared by you would negatively impact your stability anyway due to the effect on trade and happiness, so it is only really an option if it is absolutely necessary. Open conflict is not your best interest but it is an option open to you if the need arises.

I am also an artist, to some extent, so if I'm feeling savvy I will probably be collecting material or drawing sketches in the meantime; showing material like that isn't really what this stage is about, but Im optimistic and drawing might also lead into lending itself into developing further character, in writing revisions.

Please, feel free to join in discussion and tell me what you think so far. Much like the faction, I am open to opinions.

"As requested by TeddyTi you can see some of my sketchwork over HERE if you are interested in seeing like, 5 of my things."

IMPORTANT: SERIOUS CONCERNS I SHARE PLEASE CHECK HININ'S POST OVER HERE

Edit I: Name or placeholder name Avant as well as reorganizing page and updating the whole thing.

Edit II: Revision of Bio placing timeline in line with inital exploration rather than later to fall in line with current bios.

Edit III: Revision of Affinity and placement.

Edit IV: Put link in main post for link.

carolean7 wrote:

Great submission. Very well thought out. I like their beauty/culture based lore and motivations for being peaceful. The bonuses for having other factions is something I use too in my submission, though mine is centered around this feature.

I'm curious what you mean by "policies"? This was in EL, but I haven't seen mention of it yet in ES2, and I think it's being replaced by the Senate game mechanics. Do you mean something else, or am I missing something?

It is covered in Game Design Document 5: 

Luxury Resources

We want to strongly link the use of luxury to Population and the wealth of the empire. The system we suggest is inspired both by the Empire Plan (defining a specialization) and the boroughs (expanding your city) of Endless Legend.

Luxury resources allow you to develop a new social policy which can then be applied on a system. Doing so level up your system, which means:

 
• Your maximum population cap is increased 
• The bonus of the policy is given to your system for the rest of the game
  
  

A system can level up 4 times during the game; and a policy can be applied only once on each system.

The bonus the policy provides is directly linked to the luxury used to create it. At the beginning of the game, the policy only uses 1 luxury resource, and with each era, the number of luxuries that can be combined for a policy increases. However, only one policy per era can be created!"

The two things I am worried about is that you will not always be able to get the 5th policy due to a lack of another unique luxury. I don't expect all your systems that you colonize to get the benefit since you would need to have really nice luxury deposits to fuel that sort of endeavor. Tied in with this, your policies are cheaper in general which will hopefully bring it slightly in line with normal costs. 

I was thinking of increasing luxury production by changing the Absolute Luxury trait into a luxury production modifier to have a better sync with Culturepot. But it might be fine as is since you will be able to trade for luxuries over the course of the game and leaving it as it is encourages more interaction with other factions.

Reorganized everything and touched it all up. Its more fleshed out than before so I am far happier with my submission now than I was yesterday, especially now i have an actual name rather than just a concept name. I fiddled around with the affinity traits and structured the bio a little better, everything kind of slotted into place once I had names instead of blanks.

If you have trouble in terms of appearance, think giant colourful olm people in full body suits (very classy space/aqua body gloves).  A few creatures I am taking inspiration from is Olms, Axolotl (which are salamanders essentially), Eels and of course mythical Dragons. Feel free to look them up to get a better idea of what is running rampant in my imagination right now.

Thanks as always.

Edit: Im not used to the new interface soooo, how do i change my thread title.

Edit Edit:

Frogsquadron wrote:

sarin555 wrote:

Umm how do I edit the tread title? I can't think of the name at the moment, but I might change that latter.

Not implemented yet.

Welp, looks like ill just have to roll with it for now.