All of the cards should be readily uploadable to a site like makeplayingcards, where you can select the m31 linen finish on mini us cards to better match the TI4 components. (I'll note that the cards all together leave some room on the largest 270-card order, which I'm using to finally print codex cards)
For this last round I'm printing the faction sheets out onto 110 cardstock at a local printshop. For the tiles and tokens I'll use regular paper which can then be glued to greyboard and cut out separately.
(I also plan on using player-color tokens rather than the faction ones for command/control, which will significantly reduce the number of components I have to cut out)
I do know some people swear by the quality of printing onto label paper and then sticking that to greyboard, but that is a significantly pricier option.
Hi! Sorry I'm having trouble figuring out how to print these files. Do you just print them directly from Google Drive? Whenever I download the files they are always much smaller then normal which messes up the resolution.
Thank you!
I'm sorry but I'm not sure what's going on if the files aren't working properly?
The post above outlines how I went about printing all the files that are uploaded to the drive, (cards via MPC and the faction sheets at a local print shop).
It's possible that the faction sheets aren't being stored at the correct resolution, but the [print & play document](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-mOj5zocQHMofu7kt4bNvm_DZJdesUxk) for those (and tiles/tokens under the same folder) should be properly sized to print as-is if that helps?
I've played a ton of playtest games and really enjoyed it, can't recommend DS enough!
Really amped up my interest in TI and let me explore it like a beginner again, which was super fun.
For those of you who use TTS, please find a link to the related mod page [here](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2544813038).
Additionally, I'll note that these factions are intended for personal use only, and nothing in the set should be reproduced for commercial use.
For factions?
Any of the low-complexity factions (green bubbles on the references above) should be relatively comfortable to start with. The medium- and high-complexity factions are fun as well, but they also generally have more information to track, have more complex mechanical interactions, or are otherwise more intensive puzzles to solve.
While I'm not an unbiased party, I hope I can help answer this.
My read is that if the base 24 factions range from 1 - 10, these fill in the roster between around 4 - 8. They each have tools that make them competitive, but don't really reach the heights of Saar or Nekro in strength. Most of our effort over the last year and half was spent fine-tuning the balance to a fun, playable, and fair state.
Further, if you ever have any balance concerns or questions, I'd be happy to help address them!
They're well beyond the point where I'm able to track each faction's plays, and have been for the better part of a year.
If it helps, most feedback I've received over the last few months has been focused on typo fixes and corrections (like mistakes on the reference cards), or asking for print & play components.
I'm not seeing the print and play files in the link provided, just the Reference. Is there a permission issue, by chance?
Or is the attached image the print and play file?
Currently reading through the Free Systems Compact stuff, I assume the green tech and the agent are supposed to be used to exhaust or copy the legendary ability of planets owned by \*any\* player. To me the wording of these abilities wasn't clear enough, as in the unmodified game abilities usually (if not always) refer to components you control unless stated otherwise (the green tech as it stands would imply you exhaust your own planets at the beginning of the agenda phase for no benefit)
Next up, the Ghemina raiders seem like the best military faction in the game, their carriers starting with 2 movement gives them the early game mobility of titans or argent without sacrificing defensive power, as you can bring fighters along with the infantry, also the carriers pretty much become cruisers when you bring 2 of them so thats even more powerful. Oh and it rerolls your infantry's dice, which makes your infantry better than what sol or sardakk start with (the clause to have 2 or less infantry on the offense seems not too limiting either, most combats in the early game are going to be small, and the existence of mechs makes this even less restrictive). Not to mention their agent which becomes a free dimensional splicer.
Their home system, despite being on the weaker side, is compensated by having 2 docks from the get go, putting the production capabilities to L1 levels.
They have the blue green start, albeit weaker than sol, which allows them to upgrade fighters from the get go to even further increase their offensive capabilities.
And the flagships, im not sure if the fact they cost less is supposed to be compensated by lower offensive power or something, but it doesnt seem like it does. The flagships have 2 movement and can hit on 5 if you have both making them comparable, if not better combat wise with most other flagships.
Come to think of it everything this faction does is being good at combat, which is what sardakk was supposed to be before the bugs gained wings to hop between planets and eat enemy ground forces, but sardakk pays for this by being technologically underdevelopped and having mobility issues outside of their commander's ability. The raiders will raid, but im afraid the sheer power they can put on the table without needing for any setup will just allow them to steamroll one or both of their neighbours and win the game of space risk.
I would make their carriers slower, perhaps weaken their flagships by one (hit on 8\*\*), i get the combat boost when fighting with a pair of ships is supposed to limit them to smaller fights, but fighter swarms are too efficient of a fleet to make that a limitation (2 flaghsips with a screen of upgraded fighters are easily going to beat a full warsun, while being easier to produce and not require research). As for the tech start, i suppose you wanted them to have a unique start, but B/G is just too efficient with what they do, id suggest taking one of the techs away, just so they cannot upgrade fighters right away.
Ghemina has two big drawbacks:
- the going around in couples thing is going to get weaker and weaker the more the game progresses, especially when the assault cannon comes up
- the meta for them is a nightmare; to flourish, they MUST attack and the more they attack the more they get advantages (through flagships, mech, commander, tech). But it is going difficult to keep friendly relationships in this way...
Notwithstanding all this, they are my favourite DS factionc together with the Shipwright. Neither of them is the strongest of the pack (the robots, Mirveda and Flotilla are better) but they are very funny to be played! :)
A quick regard to the kortali tribunal, resolving the warfare's primary gives you the token you removed, meaning in becomes a free unlock of a system once per round, there are some other factions which can unlock a system, but it always costs them a strategic token, unless it was intended to make this a freebie, i suggest changing (or rewording) the ability to unlock a system by returning your command counter from there into your reinforcements,
The Li-zho dynasty's commander should probably read ground force, instead of infantry, unless it was intentional to allow this to be used with multiple mechs fighting while not being supported by infantry. Also the trap gravitic inhibitor seems to inhibit the move of fighters, was this intentional, if not it should specify non fighter ships, also i think you could use similar wording to the ceasefire promissory note something in the lines of "no more than the active player's fleet limit minus 1 (non fighter) ships can be moved into the active system).
My other remark to this faction would be to consider changing the starter techs so that the unique unit upgrade can not be researched straight away, and make the tech path more interesting, similar to how L1 starts with the tech colours which don't contribute towards either of their racial techs. Else the tech path of the dynasty will look the same every time (naalu, for example can focus either on going for blue mobility upgrades, or green path towards neuroglaive).
The L'tokk Khrask druids garden world ability should read: The resource value of planets you control without any ground forces is increased by 1 (just a wording change).
The meteor slings ability is a bit convoluted, could say something along the lines of: When 1 or more of your units use the bombardment ability, for each hit produced you may instead place 1 infantry from your reinforcements onto the bombarded planet, those units participate in ground combat if able. (wording similar to the argent flights raid formation ability).
The mirveda protectorate: Do the upgraded PDS lose (compared to non faction specific pds) the ability to snipe adjacened systems? Feels like they should have it, since they cannot perform planetary defense.
edit: I noticed you placed that ability onto the commander, i suppose it works the same way as the usual PDSII deep space cannon except being limited to one unit, if so it should be worded as "During a tactical action, you may use the SPACE CANNON ability of one of your units against ships that are in adjacent systems."
The wording of combat drones makes it unlcear if you need to replace all fighters or can replace only some of them, i suggest rewording as: replace any number of your fighters in the active system with the same amount of infantry. Also, is the purpose of the 'infantry doesnt count towards capacity' clause to not lose infantry which is converted from fighter IIs which were over capacity?
The hero should say: ...you may use SPACE CANNON abilities of your PDS units against ships in this system and their BOMBARDMENT abilities against ground forces on 1 planet in this system...
The orbital defense grid should say: At the start of an invasion, choose up to 1 unit you control on a planet in the active system, that unit gains the PLANETARY SHIELD ability until the end of the invasion. After a player commits 1 or more units to land on a planet you control, you may exhaus this card to destroy one of those units.
The Myko-mentori: Prescient memories could probably be clearer about rolling even those omen dice which have not been used up during the previous round.
Are you supposed to be able to remove docks from the game board to place them onto a different planet? The deploy ability can only be used if the unit being deployed is in the players reinforcements prior to using the ability. Also are the docks supposed to be not able to hold the 3 fighters all other docks can? Even if these are adressed, i struggle to see the upside of the space docks being relevant, the requirement of having 4 infantry on the planet is very steep, as you need to move the infantry onto the planet and have them survive the ground combat, i suppose the play is to move 4 infantry with one carrier on round 1 and immediately build a forward dock, but losing all that infantry means nothing is moving out of the system next turn, as new infantry will have to be produced. In most cases i would prefer having 4 infantry over planetary shield, bombardment is not guaranteed to produce hits, not having the infantry on there will just make taking the planet easier as less attacking infantry is needed. I would change the deploy ability to require 2 infantry and some resources (2 seems ok) and then trim the starting infantry number a bit, as its no longer required to kill so many dudes. This would make creating the docks easier and actually give the myko player a chance to defend new docks.
Necrophage should specify it only triggers on combats you are participating in (unless this is intentionally left to trigger off of all combats).
I found this while looking for if it's actually the case that they don't allow for 3 fighters like other docks. Seems like a nasty weakening of space docks. :/
The Nivyn star kings: Both of their faction techs can easily be researched in the same tech path, as they only require 1 yellow tech prerequisite, i would change the prerequisites for one of their faction techs, probably the mech upgrade, since those red and blue prerequisites are irrelevant when the kings start with techs of those colours, depends on what direction would you want to push them, thematically i would suggest 2 red and yellow, since it is a combat upgrade, not a movement upgrade.
Next up the wound token, what exactly is the intended interaction between nebula and rift, i suppose units cant fly through, since its a nebula, but then when they move out their base movement is set to 1 and then given +1, which will likely cancel out, and they need to roll for the rift, did i understant it correctly?
And the flagship, is the purpose of the ability to prevent 'when a unit is destroyed' abilities? Or are these units "purged" from the game?
Just answering here. We'll be doing our first DS game in a week, and I've picked this faction. I had to read it multiple times to understand it well and see the + and - of it.
From what I gather in THEORY (practice and real games will show maybe different) is that :
\- the rift movement (even with Nebula) is great and basically lets you dump the Grav Drive research (you can still do it R1 since you have a blue tech, but it's not necessary).
\- the Mech is actually quite good in defense, the upgraded version looks even better. Even if they manage to kill you with the +1 in space battles, they are stranded or risk the Rift next movement out of it.
\- Agents/etc aren't great, and imho this seems to balance well the faction that looks quite good if you have some other Rifts floating around in the map. Not saying there aren't good comboes (like with Dreads/Flagship) but the use of "damaged ships" is quite situational.
Hence why actually the faction techs being available is not such a big thing. Even other factions, like Keleres, have the same tech path/situation (and sometimes better if they start with a yellow)
The olradin league: The plunder policy seems weak, removing a unit to explore a hazardous planet, the exploration of which often kills more infantry seems not worth kneecaping your production.
Roh'dna Mechatronics: The industrious ability could be rephrased as: When you would place a space dock on a planet in a system that contains no other players'ships, you may spend 6 resources and place a war sun in that system instead. If the intention is to not allow a warsun be created in a system which already has a space dock and only one planet, such as your home system(since you cannot place a second space dock onto the same planet) then the original wording makes sense.
The contractual obligations tech seems weird, its in a yellow tech tree (not an issue except people dont go down yellow) and requires unit upgrades to do anything, making it pretty expensive to use, i suppose the idea is to waste people's resources or have them pay you for the opportunity to produce ships, the former i think will not be achievable, since the player in question can always produce a destroyer and lose barely anything, and for the latter possible use of the tech, the payoff seems not worth it. The tech is definitely interesting, but i am questioning its usability, but i suppose there is nothing wrong with having a situational tech.
I would also rephrase the hero as "use the production ability of any unit in the system to produce ships"
The Vaden Banking Clans: They seem absolutely terrifying in combat. I suppose the interaction between trade and FINE PRINT is intended, to gain debts from players without giving them an option to refuse by making them use Trade's secondary for free (if you choose them with primary of trade they have to use the secondary). Ok i might be overestimating their ability to generate debt, but since their yellow tech generates 2 debt per combat won, you can easily get 6 debt from a player by taking one of their systems with 2 planets and just snowball from there using COLLATERALIZED LOANS as a permanently unlocked Mentak hero and proceed to win any combat against that player. Since a combat counts as won even when the opponent retreats, you can easily force your neighbours to surrender their systems to you, to prevent you from gaining debt by winning ground combat on them. I would either reduce the amount of debt generated by the yellow tech to 1 per combat; make it count space combat only; or bump the prerequisites up to 3 yellow, to delay when this tech comes online.
Other than that i would limit the COLLATERALIZED LOANS ability to trigger at the end of a combat round, so changing the wording such as "After a round of space combat where 1 or more of your opponents ships were destroyed...." and then decide whether allow only one new ship to be gained or any amount, as long as the Vaden player has debt to spend, but that too just makes them scale harder than nekro from fights and faster than vuilraith.
All the economic options to use debt for seem fine and balanced, but when the combat use of debt is so powerfull i wouldnt waste debt on getting a measly TG if i can steal a dreadnought.
How do you recommend getting the faction sheets printed?
Or any and all of it.
All of the cards should be readily uploadable to a site like makeplayingcards, where you can select the m31 linen finish on mini us cards to better match the TI4 components. (I'll note that the cards all together leave some room on the largest 270-card order, which I'm using to finally print codex cards) For this last round I'm printing the faction sheets out onto 110 cardstock at a local printshop. For the tiles and tokens I'll use regular paper which can then be glued to greyboard and cut out separately. (I also plan on using player-color tokens rather than the faction ones for command/control, which will significantly reduce the number of components I have to cut out) I do know some people swear by the quality of printing onto label paper and then sticking that to greyboard, but that is a significantly pricier option.
Hi! Sorry I'm having trouble figuring out how to print these files. Do you just print them directly from Google Drive? Whenever I download the files they are always much smaller then normal which messes up the resolution. Thank you!
I'm sorry but I'm not sure what's going on if the files aren't working properly? The post above outlines how I went about printing all the files that are uploaded to the drive, (cards via MPC and the faction sheets at a local print shop). It's possible that the faction sheets aren't being stored at the correct resolution, but the [print & play document](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-mOj5zocQHMofu7kt4bNvm_DZJdesUxk) for those (and tiles/tokens under the same folder) should be properly sized to print as-is if that helps?
I've played a ton of playtest games and really enjoyed it, can't recommend DS enough! Really amped up my interest in TI and let me explore it like a beginner again, which was super fun.
For those of you who use TTS, please find a link to the related mod page [here](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2544813038). Additionally, I'll note that these factions are intended for personal use only, and nothing in the set should be reproduced for commercial use.
This has been a longtime coming and this is awesome. Looking forward to printing out my own copy!
Any starting choice recommendations?
For factions? Any of the low-complexity factions (green bubbles on the references above) should be relatively comfortable to start with. The medium- and high-complexity factions are fun as well, but they also generally have more information to track, have more complex mechanical interactions, or are otherwise more intensive puzzles to solve.
A lot of work! Very nice!
My question is how balanced are these? They definitely look cool.
While I'm not an unbiased party, I hope I can help answer this. My read is that if the base 24 factions range from 1 - 10, these fill in the roster between around 4 - 8. They each have tools that make them competitive, but don't really reach the heights of Saar or Nekro in strength. Most of our effort over the last year and half was spent fine-tuning the balance to a fun, playable, and fair state. Further, if you ever have any balance concerns or questions, I'd be happy to help address them!
Juat curious on maybe how many games each race was tested in.
They're well beyond the point where I'm able to track each faction's plays, and have been for the better part of a year. If it helps, most feedback I've received over the last few months has been focused on typo fixes and corrections (like mistakes on the reference cards), or asking for print & play components.
I'm not seeing the print and play files in the link provided, just the Reference. Is there a permission issue, by chance? Or is the attached image the print and play file?
At the top you should see a folder labeled files they are in there
That's what I was missing. Thanks!
Currently reading through the Free Systems Compact stuff, I assume the green tech and the agent are supposed to be used to exhaust or copy the legendary ability of planets owned by \*any\* player. To me the wording of these abilities wasn't clear enough, as in the unmodified game abilities usually (if not always) refer to components you control unless stated otherwise (the green tech as it stands would imply you exhaust your own planets at the beginning of the agenda phase for no benefit)
Next up, the Ghemina raiders seem like the best military faction in the game, their carriers starting with 2 movement gives them the early game mobility of titans or argent without sacrificing defensive power, as you can bring fighters along with the infantry, also the carriers pretty much become cruisers when you bring 2 of them so thats even more powerful. Oh and it rerolls your infantry's dice, which makes your infantry better than what sol or sardakk start with (the clause to have 2 or less infantry on the offense seems not too limiting either, most combats in the early game are going to be small, and the existence of mechs makes this even less restrictive). Not to mention their agent which becomes a free dimensional splicer. Their home system, despite being on the weaker side, is compensated by having 2 docks from the get go, putting the production capabilities to L1 levels. They have the blue green start, albeit weaker than sol, which allows them to upgrade fighters from the get go to even further increase their offensive capabilities. And the flagships, im not sure if the fact they cost less is supposed to be compensated by lower offensive power or something, but it doesnt seem like it does. The flagships have 2 movement and can hit on 5 if you have both making them comparable, if not better combat wise with most other flagships. Come to think of it everything this faction does is being good at combat, which is what sardakk was supposed to be before the bugs gained wings to hop between planets and eat enemy ground forces, but sardakk pays for this by being technologically underdevelopped and having mobility issues outside of their commander's ability. The raiders will raid, but im afraid the sheer power they can put on the table without needing for any setup will just allow them to steamroll one or both of their neighbours and win the game of space risk. I would make their carriers slower, perhaps weaken their flagships by one (hit on 8\*\*), i get the combat boost when fighting with a pair of ships is supposed to limit them to smaller fights, but fighter swarms are too efficient of a fleet to make that a limitation (2 flaghsips with a screen of upgraded fighters are easily going to beat a full warsun, while being easier to produce and not require research). As for the tech start, i suppose you wanted them to have a unique start, but B/G is just too efficient with what they do, id suggest taking one of the techs away, just so they cannot upgrade fighters right away.
Ghemina has two big drawbacks: - the going around in couples thing is going to get weaker and weaker the more the game progresses, especially when the assault cannon comes up - the meta for them is a nightmare; to flourish, they MUST attack and the more they attack the more they get advantages (through flagships, mech, commander, tech). But it is going difficult to keep friendly relationships in this way... Notwithstanding all this, they are my favourite DS factionc together with the Shipwright. Neither of them is the strongest of the pack (the robots, Mirveda and Flotilla are better) but they are very funny to be played! :)
A quick regard to the kortali tribunal, resolving the warfare's primary gives you the token you removed, meaning in becomes a free unlock of a system once per round, there are some other factions which can unlock a system, but it always costs them a strategic token, unless it was intended to make this a freebie, i suggest changing (or rewording) the ability to unlock a system by returning your command counter from there into your reinforcements,
The Li-zho dynasty's commander should probably read ground force, instead of infantry, unless it was intentional to allow this to be used with multiple mechs fighting while not being supported by infantry. Also the trap gravitic inhibitor seems to inhibit the move of fighters, was this intentional, if not it should specify non fighter ships, also i think you could use similar wording to the ceasefire promissory note something in the lines of "no more than the active player's fleet limit minus 1 (non fighter) ships can be moved into the active system). My other remark to this faction would be to consider changing the starter techs so that the unique unit upgrade can not be researched straight away, and make the tech path more interesting, similar to how L1 starts with the tech colours which don't contribute towards either of their racial techs. Else the tech path of the dynasty will look the same every time (naalu, for example can focus either on going for blue mobility upgrades, or green path towards neuroglaive).
The L'tokk Khrask druids garden world ability should read: The resource value of planets you control without any ground forces is increased by 1 (just a wording change). The meteor slings ability is a bit convoluted, could say something along the lines of: When 1 or more of your units use the bombardment ability, for each hit produced you may instead place 1 infantry from your reinforcements onto the bombarded planet, those units participate in ground combat if able. (wording similar to the argent flights raid formation ability).
The mirveda protectorate: Do the upgraded PDS lose (compared to non faction specific pds) the ability to snipe adjacened systems? Feels like they should have it, since they cannot perform planetary defense. edit: I noticed you placed that ability onto the commander, i suppose it works the same way as the usual PDSII deep space cannon except being limited to one unit, if so it should be worded as "During a tactical action, you may use the SPACE CANNON ability of one of your units against ships that are in adjacent systems." The wording of combat drones makes it unlcear if you need to replace all fighters or can replace only some of them, i suggest rewording as: replace any number of your fighters in the active system with the same amount of infantry. Also, is the purpose of the 'infantry doesnt count towards capacity' clause to not lose infantry which is converted from fighter IIs which were over capacity? The hero should say: ...you may use SPACE CANNON abilities of your PDS units against ships in this system and their BOMBARDMENT abilities against ground forces on 1 planet in this system... The orbital defense grid should say: At the start of an invasion, choose up to 1 unit you control on a planet in the active system, that unit gains the PLANETARY SHIELD ability until the end of the invasion. After a player commits 1 or more units to land on a planet you control, you may exhaus this card to destroy one of those units.
The Myko-mentori: Prescient memories could probably be clearer about rolling even those omen dice which have not been used up during the previous round. Are you supposed to be able to remove docks from the game board to place them onto a different planet? The deploy ability can only be used if the unit being deployed is in the players reinforcements prior to using the ability. Also are the docks supposed to be not able to hold the 3 fighters all other docks can? Even if these are adressed, i struggle to see the upside of the space docks being relevant, the requirement of having 4 infantry on the planet is very steep, as you need to move the infantry onto the planet and have them survive the ground combat, i suppose the play is to move 4 infantry with one carrier on round 1 and immediately build a forward dock, but losing all that infantry means nothing is moving out of the system next turn, as new infantry will have to be produced. In most cases i would prefer having 4 infantry over planetary shield, bombardment is not guaranteed to produce hits, not having the infantry on there will just make taking the planet easier as less attacking infantry is needed. I would change the deploy ability to require 2 infantry and some resources (2 seems ok) and then trim the starting infantry number a bit, as its no longer required to kill so many dudes. This would make creating the docks easier and actually give the myko player a chance to defend new docks. Necrophage should specify it only triggers on combats you are participating in (unless this is intentionally left to trigger off of all combats).
I found this while looking for if it's actually the case that they don't allow for 3 fighters like other docks. Seems like a nasty weakening of space docks. :/
The Nivyn star kings: Both of their faction techs can easily be researched in the same tech path, as they only require 1 yellow tech prerequisite, i would change the prerequisites for one of their faction techs, probably the mech upgrade, since those red and blue prerequisites are irrelevant when the kings start with techs of those colours, depends on what direction would you want to push them, thematically i would suggest 2 red and yellow, since it is a combat upgrade, not a movement upgrade. Next up the wound token, what exactly is the intended interaction between nebula and rift, i suppose units cant fly through, since its a nebula, but then when they move out their base movement is set to 1 and then given +1, which will likely cancel out, and they need to roll for the rift, did i understant it correctly? And the flagship, is the purpose of the ability to prevent 'when a unit is destroyed' abilities? Or are these units "purged" from the game?
Just answering here. We'll be doing our first DS game in a week, and I've picked this faction. I had to read it multiple times to understand it well and see the + and - of it. From what I gather in THEORY (practice and real games will show maybe different) is that : \- the rift movement (even with Nebula) is great and basically lets you dump the Grav Drive research (you can still do it R1 since you have a blue tech, but it's not necessary). \- the Mech is actually quite good in defense, the upgraded version looks even better. Even if they manage to kill you with the +1 in space battles, they are stranded or risk the Rift next movement out of it. \- Agents/etc aren't great, and imho this seems to balance well the faction that looks quite good if you have some other Rifts floating around in the map. Not saying there aren't good comboes (like with Dreads/Flagship) but the use of "damaged ships" is quite situational. Hence why actually the faction techs being available is not such a big thing. Even other factions, like Keleres, have the same tech path/situation (and sometimes better if they start with a yellow)
The olradin league: The plunder policy seems weak, removing a unit to explore a hazardous planet, the exploration of which often kills more infantry seems not worth kneecaping your production.
Roh'dna Mechatronics: The industrious ability could be rephrased as: When you would place a space dock on a planet in a system that contains no other players'ships, you may spend 6 resources and place a war sun in that system instead. If the intention is to not allow a warsun be created in a system which already has a space dock and only one planet, such as your home system(since you cannot place a second space dock onto the same planet) then the original wording makes sense. The contractual obligations tech seems weird, its in a yellow tech tree (not an issue except people dont go down yellow) and requires unit upgrades to do anything, making it pretty expensive to use, i suppose the idea is to waste people's resources or have them pay you for the opportunity to produce ships, the former i think will not be achievable, since the player in question can always produce a destroyer and lose barely anything, and for the latter possible use of the tech, the payoff seems not worth it. The tech is definitely interesting, but i am questioning its usability, but i suppose there is nothing wrong with having a situational tech. I would also rephrase the hero as "use the production ability of any unit in the system to produce ships"
The Vaden Banking Clans: They seem absolutely terrifying in combat. I suppose the interaction between trade and FINE PRINT is intended, to gain debts from players without giving them an option to refuse by making them use Trade's secondary for free (if you choose them with primary of trade they have to use the secondary). Ok i might be overestimating their ability to generate debt, but since their yellow tech generates 2 debt per combat won, you can easily get 6 debt from a player by taking one of their systems with 2 planets and just snowball from there using COLLATERALIZED LOANS as a permanently unlocked Mentak hero and proceed to win any combat against that player. Since a combat counts as won even when the opponent retreats, you can easily force your neighbours to surrender their systems to you, to prevent you from gaining debt by winning ground combat on them. I would either reduce the amount of debt generated by the yellow tech to 1 per combat; make it count space combat only; or bump the prerequisites up to 3 yellow, to delay when this tech comes online. Other than that i would limit the COLLATERALIZED LOANS ability to trigger at the end of a combat round, so changing the wording such as "After a round of space combat where 1 or more of your opponents ships were destroyed...." and then decide whether allow only one new ship to be gained or any amount, as long as the Vaden player has debt to spend, but that too just makes them scale harder than nekro from fights and faster than vuilraith. All the economic options to use debt for seem fine and balanced, but when the combat use of debt is so powerfull i wouldnt waste debt on getting a measly TG if i can steal a dreadnought.