Introduction:

The Vazurans have received a lot of rude and hateful comments over the years—especially when they first appeared in the mod. After that, they were nerfed, stapled, and thrown into a corner without any redemption. I think it's time for a change, and I have some free time on my hands.

Before making changes, I’d like to gather feedback. Feel free to share your thoughts on what the Vazurans should be.

Current Mechanics:

(Short version)
Currently, they appear pretty early, wreck a system, and then leave. If you defeat their fleets, they retaliate by attacking your capital system. They grow stronger over time with different ship designs. If you manage to defeat the retaliation fleet, you gain access to a wormhole to their home planet, the "Star Throne," and receive T6.5 armor along with a unique habitat if you conquer the system.

Current Issues:
(My opinion)

• They raid very early.
  
• If you stop the raids, they retaliate by attacking your capital with an even bigger fleet.
  
• This leads to passive observation since attacking them can mean losing your capital.
  
• Notification events about others being attacked pop up, but they don’t feel relevant.
  
• The raids drag on too long and don’t really lead anywhere—at best, they're unengaging; at worst, annoying.
  
• They don’t function as a midgame or endgame crisis despite their lore. (No crisis scaling, no major threat.)

Planned Changes:

- Lore Adjustments:

• During the midgame, they begin to resurface and rebuild their empire.
  
• To do this, they plunder and raid.
  
• If they succeed, they return later as a proper threat.

- Splitting the Event Chain into two Phases:

Midgame Phase:

• Begins, you guessed it, in the midgame.
  
• Raids continue similarly to the current version.
  
• No retaliation upon fleet destruction—Vazurans are focused on plundering, stealing, and boarding ships to rebuild.
  
• A new situation (similar to the Voidworm Plague) tracks progress until you can stop the portals from opening.
  
• You can pay them to leave you alone.
  
• The overall galactic response affects the endgame:
  
  • Paying them off and letting them loot increases the chance of an endgame crisis.
    
  • Destroying their raids decreases that chance.
    

Endgame Phase:

• Begins, you guessed it, in the endgame.
  
• Raids stop—Vazurans no longer pop into random systems.
  
• Rifts appear across the galaxy, spawning large Vazuran fleets as a proper endgame threat.
  
• Conquering a rift system gives two options:
  
  • Destroy the rift.
    
  • Enable your fleets to use the network but let it open
    
  
  
• Destroying rifts increases Vazuran presence in other rift systems.
  
• Multiple approaches for their behavior:
  
  • Approach 1: Like an Awakened Empire, trying to conquer all.
    
  • Approach 2: A full endgame crisis, purging and killing everything.
    
  • Approach 3: A hostile but regular empire with advanced tech and big fleets.
    

Smaller Changes:

• Make their home system more interesting.
  
• Improve rewards to be more in line with vanilla crises (relics, specimens).
  
• Add them to the precursor galaxy settings in vanilla 4.0.

Further Notes:

Don't expect this to be done by tomorrow. This thread is mainly for gathering ideas and feedback, and development will take some time.

In the meantime, I’m working on mechanics for the three "toggle" origins in MEM:

• From the Ashes rework: Mod Page
  
• Ceaseless Gaze & Faintwater Concept: My concepts[github.com]

Please keep feedback constructive, even if you don’t like the concept or current Vazurans .