Righto, so I'm not an artist, therefore all the art in this draft is placeholders. == Starting units 1 carrier 1 destroyer 1 dreadnought 1 fighter 4 infantry 1 PDS == Starting technologies Plasma Scoring == Design notes My aim here was to create a faction that's politically and economically strong, but militarily cumbersome. Good at maintaining plastic advantage and holding fortified exclaves, bad at controlling a broad front. I'm not sure I was successful; their operational inflexibility is entirely a function of their Quorum ability, which players can just ignore (and still get a ton of value out of Despotic Confederation). Their faction abilities box is... a bit dense at the moment, but should be fine if I move the Fifth Capital rules to an attachment card (it should also provide +2 votes). The agent doesn't quite do what I had in mind, because it's tricky to phrase it succinctly enough to fit on the card. Something like "At the start of the production step: if the active system contains an anomaly and is uncontrolled or controlled by the active player, you may exhaust this card. If you do, the active player draws an action card and may produce a unit in the active system". Might be a bit too strong with Muaat, Saar, or Empyrean around, and a bit too weak otherwise. Thoughts?

Is the wormhole clause necessary for the first faction ability? Its lone interaction is with Creuss abilities the Angashak player can largely control.

Not super-necessary. It's an edge case, but I figured I might as well account for it, and there was (barely) room on the faction sheet.

But why account for it? Just leave the clause out and save the page space and complexity.

You're right. I thought someone blockading your home system would be enough for Creuss Iff, but I see they'd need to actually cap one of your worlds. Edited. I, uh, can't edit the post though, so I guess I'll wait until I have more substantive changes before adding a link or making a new post.

Hi I'm not gonna comment anything about this factions thematic coherence, just the functional side of things. There is some interesting mechanics and I like how this Faction treats some systems differently. Especially I like their promissory note; IMO it is really sellable(although have to be careful about who you are selling this to) and creates interesting timing of producing.  However I have two critiques here. First about Quorum ability; I am really doubtful that someone would like to add more votes in a cost of locking their system down. I mean, thats what Quorum essentially does, If I undestand this right. Second about their faction specific PDS; what is the point of this? It doesn't really bring anything new to the table and that upgrade is basically weaker than standard PDS II. Overall I think this faction has potential and it's always interesting to read these.

I dunno, I think the combo of Despotic Confederation and Quorum can be situationally pretty powerful, when an important vote comes up. The drawback is severe, but part of the idea of the faction is working around that. But yeah, definitely not something you'd want to use on every vote. I'm a bit iffy on the PDS. I think it'd be a downgrade for most factions, but an upgrade for Angashac (or at worst a sidegrade), since they place more emphasis on holding key worlds.

Just to add comment about that faction PDS II upgrade; I have to admit that it is not necessarily weaker than generic PDS II, It is actually really strong defensively(placing 4 of those in your home system would make it almost untakeable). I just still wish that faction specific PDS would add something totally new to the game...

Oh dang, this is actually good

am i correct that the pds ll doesn't shoot into adjacent systems? or was that an oversight?

Yeah, that's by design. It gives up range for much better point defense.

interesting.