I’d really like to see relationships with individual havens matter more. Right now, I hardly bother looking at them, but if there were real benefits to a friendly relationship, you could incentivize more interesting interactions with them. Like being able to rest and heal at friendly havens, or buy gear.
Turns out there’s already a similar suggestion. Give it an upvote if you like it.
Voted up, and agreed. Small gifts per plus 5 or plus 10 advancements, is far better then waiting for big status change twice in a game.
Also, first reward could be a single research instead of full map - that player is not able to defend anyway.
“Full map” makes travelling around easier (or possible to certain locations), which helps a lot those who would like to get bases up on different continents early (and don’t want to just abuse the “full heli → can teleport recruits/vehicles” mechanic).
True, but could be immediate next reward. And is needed for missions placed at other continens.
But, few and smaller reward anyway could be significant. Alliance is distant and gives too much at once, while some progression would be more helpful.
For me, the key thing is you don’t get penalised enough for doing something bad to a Haven.
You’ve stolen their only means of transport and supply? That cost you c.-5 Dip my friend.
No problem, I’ll just go and shoot up a few Pandas and get +10 Dip back.
There is no disincentive for acting like a sh!* to the Havens, and every incentive for screwing them over every chance you get - which means it’s very easy to get to full Allied status with all of them.
Personally, I think it would help the Diplomatic balance overall if:
a) All Dip penalties in the game were simply doubled.
b) Once you were Aligned at 50 Dip with one Faction, you could not Align with the Faction that hates them: so if NJ hates Anu hates Synedrion hates NJ (which seems most likely), NJ would refuse to Align with you if you had cosied up to the mutant alien-lovers of Anu, but Synedrion would still give you the time of day.
@MichaelIgnotus just a small correction, The penalty is - 15 with haven leader, - 6 with faction.
I have experimented a bit with raiding havens and my conclusion is that it matters very little as long as you do it with some moderation and you keep doing things that factions like (mostly destroying Pandoran bases).
I think this is kind of intented in that the devs want to put the player in the uncomfortable moral position where you have to raid a haven for something you need, but not make it carry excessive penalty gameplay wise. Personally, I like it very much conceptually, but it’s poorly implemented, because it just doesn’t have a meaningful impact… It feels really bland to raid a haven and go from 65 rep to 50 rep, and tbh I think that going from 65 rep to 35 rep doesn’t make that much of a difference either.
I think it’s missing a more involved system where haven leaders can get replaced, havens change faction allegiance, nearby havens react to what happened, etc.
I’m sure this layer was intended, because there is lot of references in the code to havens switching faction allegiance; it is the original purpose of the Anu Missionary Centre structure, for example, and there are haven and exploration events that have changes to attitude of a haven leader towards a faction as an effect. (I have no idea how advanced that implementation was though, I’m not a coder).
Since the devs have time and again publicly acknowledged (for example, Jullian Gollop in that interview last week, and Hristo Petkov back in January in the Q&A with UV) that they are unhappy with the diplomacy system, that they have only been partially successful in achieving what they wanted, I hope that we will see something good happening in that department.
Maybe you could avoid the penalty if you performed the raid with non-PP gear. “It was bandits!”
Yea, I was exaggerating for effect (or rather, I couldn’t remember the numbers off the top of my head).
But the point remains that the penalties for being a dick are so insignificant that they’re frankly worthless.
I for one would welcome a well thought out overhaul of the entire Diplomacy system, but in the absence of that, at least make betraying a faction have some meaningful impact on your relations with them.
I’ll usually only raid and steal from the faction that I have the worst relationship with. It’s usually NJ for some reason.
Perhaps what would make sense is that to carry out a raid you can ‘infiltrate’ the haven first (so that they don’t see aircraft), which would take time, but then the penalty is smaller because they can’t pin in it on you.
In my last playthroughs I have been stealing Helios from Synedrion. Or rather attempting to: I managed it once, and then the next 2 times it got blown on the last turn. Quite comical, tbh, losing rep that way; no biggie though, as by the first week of February I had 100% with all factions.
Perhaps the main idea was to place the Game at the time of the expansion of the Factions. When the majority of the Havens were Independent and there was a struggle to capture / attach them, between the 3 main Factions.
Of course, there is a lot of chaos in this and the situation as it is now, when the Independents are in the absolute minority, is much more predictable.
I don’t like this part, because I think allying with all 3 should be “doable”, although very hard. In essence:
This in itself provides a lot of variety in difficulty inside each difficulty level, making it more granular.
I’d kind of agree with that if the Factions weren’t so clearly exclusive.
Given their ‘Humanity First’ stance - and the rabid anti-infection stance of NJ in the lore fiction that accompanied the early Backer Builds - there is absolutely no way that NJ would countenance allying themselves with anyone who fully embraced Anu. In fact, according to the lore, NJ would shoot anyone coming through the gates with an Anu mutation on sight.
Similarly, Synedrion’s democratic ideals are diametrically opposed to the hero-worshipping quasi-fascism of New Jericho.
Which leaves Anu’s quasi-religious autocracy at odds with the anarcho-syndicalism of Synedrion (though this one is a stretch, I’ll admit).
I’ll admit that when the Time Vault bugged out in the early Polaris test builds, rendering all but the Anu ending unobtainable, I was grateful for being able to switch allegiances to Anu; but that was a very particular edge case.
I just find the way that the Factions shrug off the sh*!!y way you treat them and cosy up to their enemies bears no relation to the expectations set up in the (very good) fictional lore that set the scene for this game.
While the Synedrion is a priority for Devs, I see a lot of people on YouTube who prefer New Jericho, including their ideology. Do not put these players in the framework of negative ideology from reality.
I am sure that future DLC that would enable playing as fractions would be a pure winner 
This I agree, and that’s why allying with all 3 should be very difficult.
I also agree with this:
Though I really would like to be able to change that by Phoenix Point’s actions. Even if that meant having to remove some faction leader and replace him with a more compliant 2nd-in-command (synedrion would be just about removing or convincing the polyphonic tendency, as the other subfaction thinks that humans should dominate and that’s inline enough to tolerate both NJ and Anu existences).
edit: maybe have uncompliant faction leaders killed in the last missions? This way there would be no need to change much of the game’s dialogues / scenes.
Another option would be for PP to replace factions and unite the world in one banner, even though not all individuals agree with that (as in everything). This could even be the canon ending that leads to PP2 where we have to deal with inside problems besides any other new outside threat, kinda like Chimera Squad. Cliché I know, but also reasonable.
This is a bad omen: “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
Being greedy and being ambitious are completely different business models.
Not on this forum, please. It’s a Shame, but for another studio.
I’ve got an idea for obtaining gear from friendly havens. Say that if you have a haven rep over some level, say 50, when you’re at that haven, then items that you can purchase show up in your equipment list and are “manufactured” immediately. Or there could be an additional tab for “Trade” where items available for purchase are shown.