The Problem With Royalty

[kclace]

Every time I start a new play through, I'm faced with a challenge. Royalty or not Royalty? With Royalty the game play is much better. But the main problem I have is the thematic feel of the Empire Faction and how it fits into the story I'm trying to tell.

The main thing I struggle with is, the Empire seems incredibly powerful. Advanced weapons, armor, and a fleet in orbit around the planet. Why are they not completely dominating the planet? The obvious answer would be that another faction is powerful enough to challenge them, but the other factions, thematically speaking, just don't seem up to the task.

Now the most enjoyable Royalty game I played was with faction control. Empire and mechanoids as the only faction with plenty of MODS to supe up the Mechanoids. Now that was a fun game because thematically, it felt like the Empire was locked in a war that they could very well lose. But the mechanoids don't even have bases so it still felt a little incomplete.

So most of my games are still with regular 1.2.

I guess my point is that since the Empire is an Epic kind of faction, they need an Epic enemy to fight for control of the planet. Any modded factions out there up to the task?

[Bozobub]

I really don't think it's all that unrealistic.

• Unless you plan to sterilize the surface, the ship(s) can't do much from orbit.
  
• You don't know how many ships/personnel the Empire has in orbit.
  
• There's no centralized government to assault; you pretty much have to pacify the entire planet, piecemeal.
  
• The inhabitants of the planet often have unpleasantly advanced weaponry.

So why not get the natives to do it all FOR you, at a lower cost and few Empire lives lost?  Seems pretty sound to me, if time is not a serious problem.

Note: I don't think your idea is bad at all but it makes perfect sense to me, that the Empire doesn't want to get bogged down *personally* on a barbarian world ^^'.

[Canute]

Basicly the epic enemy of the empire are the mechanoids.
The empire don't have no interest or time to deal much with that underdeveloped planet rimworld.
Their kids (lower royal's then stellarch) use it as playground to test out new tactics and weapons.

Since they have orbital shuttle's it wouldn't be a big deal for them to gather stone chunks and release them from the orbit on any settlement. But then they would loose their playground.

[RawCode]

useless planet without any valuable resources...

well, probably some sci-fi empire will wage war for jade deposits and try to establish global planetary control for one or two deposits located in very specific locations? instead of just mining that deposits ignoring everything else on planet?

[kclace]

I was thinking about your comments and led me to another question.

Why is the Stellarch with the fleet and not down on the surface?

There are a few plausible explanations.

1. We are in the very early stages of colonization. OR
2. The Empire doesn't intend to make this the new capital of their Empire or even stay for long at all.

The second explanation is definitely intriguing. It made me think of Battlestar Galactica (Empire is really a cross between BSG and Warhammer 40K). In BSG, the fleet could never stay in one place for long because they were being pursued by the Cylons, which had destroyed their home planets. They'd stop at planets to acquire resources, but they had to keep moving.

Is the Empire still on the run from whatever killed off their Empire?

There could be more mundane explanations though.

Maybe the Stellarch plans to install a minor Noble to oversee this planet and establish his capital on another world? That would also make sense.

It's fun thinking about this stuff!

[RawCode]

well, you really should not search logic and "deep meaning" in sci-fi setting.

everything in Rimworld make no sense, it's all about rule of "cool" and "fun", nothing else.

[RicRider]

I think adding more enemies to counter the Empire and also giving me the option to disable psi casting but keep the Empire and the noble ranks would go a long way for me to actually playing more Royalty games. The whole psi casting stuff just funnels what's supposed to be a sandbox story generator to a story that's only being told by anime characters with telekinetic abilities.

It went from Space Western to Space Opera basically.

[LWM]

You know, I have always thought "If I wanted to, I'd load the RimWorld of Magic mod and play with spells/etc"  But maybe I'll give Royalty a go!

[Canute]

Royallty is nice, you should have played the royallty endgame once at last.
Psycast is a nice thing and can give you some advance, but compared to Rim of Magic it is just a new year/sylvester firecracker.

[AileTheAlien]

Why is the Stellarch with the fleet and not down on the surface?

Because this is a filthy planet full of heathens, murderers and other degenerates, and the empire only wants to deal with the people who've proven their worth, and people who have valuable resources. This is supported by the fact that you need minimum bedroom, mood, etc for some empire quests, and otherwise they just send lower-class representatives to your colony.