Originally posted by Astasia:

I will start by saying I love this mod, it has turned a pretty decent game into something amazing for me, and for the past week or two I haven't been able to stop playing. I don't have too much to say about most of the mechanics because they feel spot on.

Originally posted by Astasia:

The possible issue I ran into is the main reason I'm posting this, it seems like there is a mechanic in place for dealing with alien nests and becoming friendly with them. From what I can gather, the moment they switch from green to teal all nests on resources in your territory give you those resources. This doesn't just happen once, it happens every time they switch from green to teal, and the resources are never taken away. Since you have to clear the nests anyway to gain access to the nodes (many of the buildings require having a properly improved resource nearby), this means you can flip between green and teal many times providing you with hundreds of each affinity resource. At least that is what seemed to be happening for me, as my affinity resources were exploding and it seemed to line up with me clearing nests and waiting for the aliens to become friendly again.

Originally posted by Astasia:

As for the feedback, my biggest issue with the mod is Al Falah being a horrible sponser (she is normally my favorite). The +50% affinity spread honestly just doesn't seem to make any meaningful difference. Like on it's own it does essentially nothing from what I have found, I don't notice anything and it doesn't seem to help at all. If I start spamming propaganda missions, that has a much more powerful effect and I can actually start to manipulate population affinity and shut down another sponsers pops. It's a lot of effort for nominal gains though, and I usually just ignore the entire population affinity system and reap the rewards as they come (which is only marginally slower). Her other bonus, having a little bit earlier access to governments is nice for the instant colonization, but then her penalty to external trade routes is super harsh with how mandatory it is to run station routes for the commonwealth resources. All in all it feels like her penalty outweighs her bonuses, playing as her is a handicap.

Originally posted by Astasia:

Now that I think about it Kavitha's +12 health is also on the weak side with how easy it is to get loads of health with his mod. I think I was at like 70 some health at one point in mid-game without much room or need to expand. I think something percent based would be better, maybe even use one of her deals as a base, like -10/20/30% unhealth from population.

The other bit of feedback, I like the protocol concept, but it feels like the military one is the only real option. Getting an extra early colony doesn't help as much because of the way this mod kickstarts new colonies later on, and the early metropolis is super meh with how easy it is to get the tech and how weak a "basic" metropolis is without any buildings to add to it. The combat one adds a permanent bonus you can't get any other way, so it really doesn't feel to me like there's any choice. Could just be my playstyle skewing my perspective though.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Ah right, thanks for reporting this. Unfortunately, that's a bug in the base game, not caused by this mod. I wanted to try a few things to fix that, but forget about it. No promises that it can be fixed, but I'll give it a try later.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Station Trade Routes are not included in "External Trade Routes" (which I agree is a bit confusing), "Station Trade Routes" are their own category. So Al Falah should not get a penalty for trade routes with stations.

I do agree their passive spreading bonus does feel rather weak though, and I have an idea on how to change it in the next major version.

Originally posted by Ryika:

Both of these bonuses work by allowing you to expand faster, and wider, early in the game, that's what they're useful for, not so much for later in the game. As such, I find they're pretty strong. I would even say Kavithan + Free Settler Loadout + Settler from Virtue + Settler from the Colonization Protocol is still among the strongest opening if there's enough alien-free space available, even after Kavithan was changed to no longer have Instant Cities in the last version, because while it it true that cities can be set up rather quickly later in the game, having more cities early allows you to push into those later stages of the tech and virtue tree a lot faster.

The Suppression Protocol on the other hand does nothing if you try to expand peacefully early on. I do agree the Development Protocol is pretty weak though; I might add some free Building Modules in the future, or something similar. Given that it's also the least "active" building I do think it's fine that it's a bit weaker, the gap is just too large.