The Conclusion Had, In Effect, Been Decided From the Very Beginning
Long story short, the outcome had, for all intents and purposes, been decided from the very beginning.
There had been a stretch there where posts with an alarmingly, almost excessively contentious streak came rolling in one after another, whipping our collective sanity into absolute chaos.
But setting that aside and getting back to the main topic — the fact remained that, one way or another, the veterans had shown newbie-friendly responses, and so.
Once the situation had settled down to some degree, questions naturally began bubbling up everywhere about the factions that hadn't been mentioned yet.
Of course, when it came to those very factions — pirates, space monsters, and neutral nations — the veterans drew a line sharp as a razor's edge, insisting the newbies shouldn't so much as glance in their direction...
Since the newbies, every bit as WWE-crazed as the veterans who wanted wrestling, responded in equally WWE-style fashion — flooding the threads with walls of toilet-with-the-lid-flipped-over memes — it didn't take long before the half-surrendering veterans finally began peeling back the veil on those hidden sub-factions.
But once I read what they actually put up, I understood exactly why the veterans had told us not to even look at that side of the tree...
OK so the reason you shouldn't touch the pirate / space monster / neutral nation tech trees comes down to exactly one thing.
First, the really goddamn important part: you need to understand that those three factions are set as exactly ONE thing in the faction selection window — "Neutral Faction."
But pick that faction, and those three all pop up as your "detailed tech tree." Imagine how much that sucks. lol
And the problem is it's actually unspeakably, monumentally serious.
Because those three factions are, in truth, nothing more than a temporary bucket list — arbitrary groups the modpack creator scooped out of bundled mods and lumped together.
So say you want to run the space monster national tech tree. As of right now, obviously the first thing us users think of is the Red Scourge, the most iconic space monster line going.
But the moment you actually try to walk that tree, turns out the Red Scourge is just one of an abso-fucking-lutely enormous number of side branches.
What am I on about?
Just the basic skeleton alone has at least 10-plus branches, and once you drill into the detailed branches they split again into dozens, hundreds of combinations. That's what these factions' tech trees are.
And these chaotically, insanely multiplying tech trees kick in right around when you start running proper capital ships late-game — Battleship-class or bigger?
Then it all gets so tangled that the instant you touch one wrong node, the whole thing collapses into a colossal shitshow. Yep.
To be fair, the ceiling IS high if you pull it off perfectly. Problem is, even back in the game days, pretty much no veteran ever succeeded running pirates, space monsters, or neutral nations.
To be precise: in singleplayer, veterans pulled off universal conquest using every deranged trick in the book, toying with braindead AI all the way.
In multiplayer? They have never once produced meaningful results.
Since you're going to ask why, I'll answer preemptively: obviously, it's because the road to that ceiling is pure agony.
It's complex as hell, but not usefully complex — it just sprawls everywhere with zero rhyme or reason, so it's hard enough to progress at all.
Unlike the Four Heavenly Kings factions, which guarantee you the "minimum required" tech and support, these ones basically tell the player to fend for themselves and figure it out.
And here's what I think matters most: when these factions support your ships, or when you buy a ship from them —
the catalog specs and the actual specs don't match.
In the game, item descriptions and real item performance were randomly mismatched as a mechanic. Here? Same deal, apparently.
So, example time. Say you're with the pirates and you want to buy a ship from the Pirate League.
You bought that ship as a maneuver-warfare vessel, a hit-and-run raider above all else.
But the moment the delivery arrives, you get to behold the beautiful reality that it's got speed and only speed, with maneuverability so utterly garbage it can't turn, can't bank, can't do anything — just a manned rocket.
So please, for the love of god, stop doing weird stuff and pick one of the Four Heavenly Kings nations for your main tech tree. Take your time with it.
You'll fold if you wing it ;_;
Anon(1):
I get that it's complicated and all, but is it the kind of thing you just can't grasp at a glance?
Anon(2):
Why are the neutral factions such garbage? Why??
↳ Dr. Midori:
Simple answer. Any small-to-mid interstellar civilization that was still standing on its own feet well enough to provide adequate service would've already joined Atlantis by now.
↳↳ Anon(2):
Ah.
Dr. Midori:
Adding what I forgot in the OP — the space monsters, as the Red Scourge demonstrates, are species that already got their teeth kicked in and shattered by the established civilizations, so we don't have the room to support them either.
Dr. Midori:
The small and mid neutral nations go without saying — the strongest among them here is the Replicant Republic, so yeah. Same deal.
Dr. Midori:
And if your tech tree tangles up wrong, you'll be strapping a fusion warhead onto the bow of a 10-20 meter missile boat and doing suicide torpedo runs while everyone else is cruising around in Battleships, ffs.
↳ Anon(3):
So it's a Kaiten.
↳ Anon(4):
Kamikaze... rest in peace....
Dr. Midori:
Anyway, that's how it is, so stop doing weird stuff and just do what you're told, for real.
Dr. Midori:
And don't forget — if a neutral faction run goes sideways, most of the veterans here couldn't bail you out even if they wanted to.
↳ Anon(1):
Whoa, hold on, that one's actually heavy.
↳ Anon(5):
Don't give up! Fight on!
"Hmmmmmm."
Oh, what a bizarre and agonizing read that was.
It ran so long that it kept tempting me to just skip to the end and skim the conclusion, I'll admit. A minor problem, but a persistent one.
Still, I gritted my teeth and checked every last word — and...
The structure of everything outside the Four Heavenly Kings factions positively screamed that picking any of them was a fool's errand.
So I nodded at what I'd seen, pulled the tech tree status window back up before my eyes, and, in case I'd missed anything, gave the contents one more rigorous once-over...
Confirmed — no problems whatsoever. I decided to just play it safe and carry on the way I'd originally planned, choosing the Demonia Empire.
But at the exact moment I finished that thought and moved to act on it —
Whether the fault lay with the mod creator, the game's developers, or some unidentified entity who'd transmigrated us here in the first place, I couldn't say.
MAIN FACTION TECH TREE WINDOW
Currently selected nation: None
*An explanation for users opening this for the first time is being displayed!
(excerpt)
Would you like to view information on other factions as well?
(Y)/N
"Ah."
Contrary to my intention not to view any of that faction information, my finger slipped and hit Y.
And at the same time — it was written right there in plain text, after all, that this was merely "information viewing," meaning it would just tell me and move on, and I figured I could skim it and skip past — or so I thought...
<......>
<ERROR DETECTED!>
<ERROR DETECTED!>
<System error confirmed: main faction tech tree selection fault!>
"Huhh???"
The deranged system that had, up to this very moment, chugged along without a single hiccup suddenly started throwing errors and stammering like a malfunctioning machine.
Even at this point, it still could've ended there — a nice little anecdote for the gallery. 'Yo, I had this weird experience!' — more than enough material for some idle chatter.
Unfortunately, reality proved to be unspeakably, pitilessly cruel, because a few moments later...
Main faction tech tree has been determined!
Currently selected nation: Neutral Faction
*This faction tree carries an extremely high difficulty rating! Proceed with caution!
"No. No, no, NO, you accursed goddamn system!"
I beheld, right before my eyes, a catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime disaster unfold — the system gleefully screwing someone else's faction tech tree on my behalf, entirely of its own accord.
And the instant I saw it, I felt the cursing and screaming erupt straight out of my mouth, completely unbidden.