Well, perhaps for Hero/Legendary? but yes, that would make more interesting March choosing between war with a faction or alliance to speed up researchs
You’d still get 2 aircrafts for free, though. This is the most significant game changer.
Because for me it is absolutely unlogical to be allied with two factions that are on war to each other, so I would not do that only for higher difficulties. But this is really only my personal problem. If this would be done only for higher difficulties, then it would be also OK for me.
But, give the player more options when reached aligned status, maybe trade blueprints or something similar so that you have to pay for reseach compared to the free combined research when you’re allied. Just some thoughts …
This could be not so unlogical. PX is a 10 manned … something… as PX does not have a proper identity or soul, you don’t need to think this as diplomatic… You are a little team which fights against pandorans, but kills much more humans, so nobody needs your politic view. You are helping everybody and they help you… You don’t need to open flag and cry " we are PX!!!" when you sabotage one haven too… You could be 6 random guy who suddenly attack and run…
For short, PX is not a faction… You are some random who found something useful and suddenly wanna save the earth :).
So I think rather then having reputation with factions, you should trade… mission, resources, researches… anything… I still don’t know, why would a huge faction shares with you all of their researches when you can easily sell them to enemy factions…
So the game logic fails when it takes you like a faction when you are totally not…
and I agree, there is not logic there, but others playing Rookie/Veteran would not like a war with Pandorans and factions at the same time
Sure, I suggest half of the new blueprints for weapons missions against Pandorans and the other half through great reputation maintained over time with factions , instead of missions fighting them
And REP 49+ diplomatic missions giving so many tech at a single point, I would prefer bit by bit if you can keep aligned status with them, first shared tech would be special classes, and then more technology, weapons, modules… every day or few days
3 Likes
Well, at the end PX could have 19 bases around the world and a bunch of aircrafts manned with highly armed soldiers. Most factions didn’t have this power in the later stages up to mid February and then they are also going to rampage each other.
In the later stages of the game Synedrion is very often down to under 10 heavens and also sometimes without any aircraft, NJ hits not that hard but is also pretty lowered, Anu has the most heavens in the beginning but later they also lose many of them.
Yes, in the beginning PX is only a small group of scientists with some weapons, but they are the only group that is growing and not shrinking. And yes, PX is not a faction because they have no inhabitants, but at the end they are the most powerful ‘organisation’ in the world. Then I don’t longer see them as a small group of some people that are suddenly running into something unexpected.
I can understand what you mean. BUT still rather then a faction, it’s a mercenary group with some tech equipment’s. All those bases and aircrafts are un-manned. Let’s say 50 soldier… PX is something they can use and they would like to have them by their side but not as mindset. So Synedrion can pay PX to do something… the faction reputation is about this already. They buy you. They would like to alliance with you because you got a military power. Still I think PX is not a faction.
As a military force, you can be alliance with everyone who can pay for you. My point is, you can still work with everyone regardless what they think about each other.
BUT I don’t say this faction system is good. It should be redesigned and I think rather then getting reputation or become friend/alliance. I would like to work for them… they give me a job and I do it for something… Even I done bad things for one, they could still hire me to do same thing to others or solve their problems… It would be a bit ridiculous for them just alienate PX like military force when they don’t have a chance to stop. OR if they would be enemy, they need to fight back to erase me… worse then pandorans…
6, actually - 2 from each faction 
But is that really a problem? These missions are not particularly easy and you still need the squads to man them.
Those missions are very easy early on and change the game in such a way that you are forced to balance around having at least 2 air crafts in the first week. Getting that craft on legend means having a full second squad in days rather than weeks. How do you not see this as a problem ? I always avoided stealing crafts till this patch because it feels wrong and cheesy. I restarted my campaign a few times to test different things and at some point I thought meh lets just try stealing one. This changed absolutely everything. This game went from legend to normal immediately.
Only Helios are relevant. 
4 Likes
I haven’t experimented much with stealing aircraft, tbh. I stole a Thunderbird once and found it fairly challenging, but that was quite a few iterations ago.
But if the issue is that these missions can easily be done in the first week, the solution is to make them much harder.
BTW, I usually get a second team going by mid January - with a second Manticore.
I think almost any mission against factions is easy in the first week. My sabotage missions wasn’t really hard, just destroy something and probably defeat some mostly weak defenders.
When you make them harder early on then they have to be much harder later on, or not?
Well, one issue that we are not taking into account is that Pandorans were buffed in the Necro update, but not so the human(oid) opponents, and that should be coming too at some point.
I think the steal aircraft mission was always meant as a high risk high reward proposition, so they should always be difficult, which means making them harder in the beginning and harder still later on to scale with PX capabilities.
When I think about it, maybe I found the sabotage missions pretty easy because I used a Scarab with my team. I found his rockets pretty devastating especially against human targets and on the other side my Squad was almost pretty save to move around and destroy the objectives.
Nerf Scarab? No, pls no 
I did raid missions approximately 50 times, especially the aircraft steal mission. Without vehicles on MY SIDE (not worth for me)
At some point (version ?) it was harder because the factions defeat it with their vehicles. After some patch I don’t seen any vehicles and don’t lose one soldier, not in early and not in end game.
After all: now this missions are easy.
Haven’t you ever had 2 friends that dislike each other?
I would hate blocking the player from allying with all 3 factions. I’ve proposed the exact opposite a number of times: having an ending for 3-faction alliance, and more new PX tech when you combine the 3 faction tech trees. Of course, allying to all 3 should make the game much harder and longer, it shouldn’t be easy but a real achievement. Edit: Just as well, being at war with pandorans and all 3 factions should also be a real achievement.
Lore-wise, you would be convincing the factions to not go to war against each other, or at least making peace between themselves. So, your actions should induce +rep between factions too. Right now it’s only -rep.
I know the original proposal was that they would go to war and that would fast track the world ending. That can still be always triggered to happen, but your actions may delay and/or revert it. Imagine that allying to all 3 meant surviving inter-faction war AND be a long run.
If PP had a more tiered equipment system, research could be shared in each tier… like 25 gave access to tier 1, 50 to tier 2 and 75 to tier 3. Maybe even 100% could lead to one or two “ultimate”, late game research too.
I totally agree. More aircraft early changes the game’s difficulty for the entire campaign, COMPLETELY. Even if you don’t have a full squad on it, it means you can explore a lot more, thus earn a lot more resources from events, deal with more HD’s and get +rep, +resources, +equipment, etc. It’s a snowball.
2 Likes
I thought the same for a long time. But nowadays I use them and honestly, they are worth their cheap price. They took 3 spaces in an aircraft and also in a mission setup but especially at the beginning this is not a big problem and for me on the other side a solution to get as many aircrafts manned for relatively cheap resources in the early game (compared to recruits and their equipment). This way you can spread out pretty early, more aircraft means more exploration means more resources in a shorter time, better reaction for heaven defences, more flexibility. APCs are really tanky and you have somewhat a rolling bunker for you squaddies. The rockets of the Scarab, I mean if I could change the from you OP called Boom Blast skill from the Heavy for this Scarab rocket launcher, I would not think about it for one minute. They scatter much but you get 2 rockets per shot with more damage and shred and additionally much more range than the Fury RL.
Actually I have gone this way and to the end January I had 6 aircrafts, all fully manned but always with one APC and this way I was able to control the whole globe. And all of this build by myself and not stealing one single aircraft. I was lucky to find 2 APC to scavange, but also unlucky because it was both times an Aspida (It is not bad, honestly maybe one of the best APCs, but early on I want to have somewhat more tanky and with more space, the Aspida can only load one soldier).
OK, completely out of topic now, but well …
Hmm… Thematically you can’t have Faction vehicles in the first weeks, because they have to be researched first.
But you can have enough soldiers with good stats to make the steal aircraft missions more challenging.
Aspidas are coming up pretty early, maybe even a start tech from Synedrion?
But Armadillos and Mutogs are coming much later, around mid to end January.