Factions and diplomacy could really use more options and flavor

[FelipeBarreto]

Factions are pretty underwhelming right now. You can trade them, you can take quests from them, you can fight them, but that's pretty much it. The Empire is specially disappointing because they're supposed to be a huge, organized government, but they behave almost like everyone else, just with some extra options, and there's really no reason to go against them - in fact, there's no reason to fight other factions unless you have to.

The first thing I'd like to see is factions requiring things from you in order to keep peace. So instead of organized factions (so excluding Pirates) being automatically hostile, instead they'd make a lot of demands from you: money, products, drugs, things they can't make themselves if you have the required technology. Slavers may require prisoners or even pawns, factions may require rare items, armor and weapons that you intended to use. To counter the loss of goodwill you'd have to do more stuff for them: quests, trading, gifting. Or just accepting that keeping everyone happy with you is costly, keeping a few alliances and fighting everyone else.

One thing that would give A LOT of depth and should be a perfect match with the new DLC is factions reacting to things you do and don't directly involve them. For example, a faction that really hates drugs should react to you planting, crafting, using and selling drugs at different levels - they may tolerate if you use some psychite tea, but they'll hate you no matter what if you're the one responsible for creating and selling yayo. But if they like drugs, specially if it's involved in their ideology, they'll like you for using and selling and love you for gifting them.

The Empire needs to be that, but stronger. Since they're rich and organized, getting them to like you should be VERY hard, and they should be demanding taxes and technology - maybe they can get a unique ideology that makes them want to hoard anything from spacer tech, like a spacer Brotherhood of Steel, demanding them and hating you for using them... Unless you swear fealty (which you should have to do to get titles, because that's what they mean) and have to pay higher taxes and follow their rules. So if they hate drugs, you can't use them; if they want to enforce an hierarchical quality of living, with higher titles having bigger and better bedrooms while pawns without titles have to sleep in barracks and eat simple meals (or even just paste), you better follow their orders. Also quests would be requirements to keep relations good instead of offering rewards (they expect you to follow orders), and they'd gift you some stuff randomly based on how much they like you.

That all would add a lot of life to the planet, which is pretty dead except for the colony.

[AileTheAlien]

The first thing I'd like to see is factions [...] make a lot of demands from you: [money, products, drugs, [...] prisoners or even pawns, [...] rare items, armor and weapons that you intended to use. To counter the loss of goodwill you'd have to do [...] quests, trading, gifting. [...]

a faction that really hates drugs should react to you planting, crafting, using and selling drugs at different levels - they may tolerate if you use some psychite tea, but they'll hate you no matter what if you're the one responsible for creating and selling yayo. But if they like drugs, specially if it's involved in their ideology, they'll like you for using and selling and love you for gifting them.

I'm hoping that with the new DLC, the different factions in the game will have randomized likes and dislikes, exactly for this reason. Maybe in one game, the rough outlanders send a quest that demands you tear down your statue to the Holy History Hoarder, because they're worshippers of Pit-Fighting Power-Father and Books Are For Nerds. If your relations drop low enough, they demand some prisoners every year to fight in their gladitatorial matches. Maybe they barely trade any guns, at horrible prices, but offer a wide variety of melee weapons, because they have surplus from all the cage-matches.

[ShadowTani]

Well, we do know that the faction goodwill system have been reworked for 1.3 and based on one of the pictures in the news post the factions do indeed have their own ideologies in the DLC that may likely affect their natural goodwill towards you. Like how the empire have an "Archotechnic Fealtism" ideology. The question is whether the various faction ideologies are static in design or will have a degree of variation between each game, will be interesting to find out.

I wouldn't expect a complete diplomatic overhaul this time around though, but it seems to be a step forward at least. It's not something that should be rushed either way, just throwing a lot of tribute systems in there without rhyme and reason isn't going to be particularly fun in the long run.