Welcome to the Faction Update patch breakdown for In Search of a Home! We’re gonna go over the new features that launch on our November 12th patch.
Summary
Factions
New Abilities:
Apex Division “Field Marshals”: 1 Favor, Scan and exploit times are reduced by 50% in this system.
Theia Corp “Air Dirty Laundry”: 2 Favors, Replace captain of chosen ship with a new, random one.
Sodality “Build a Better Future”: 3 Favors, Select a ship - upgrade all installations on that ship without paying any costs.
New Agendas for Theia Corp, Apex Division, and Sodality
Removed Espial Society
Removed Synod of Jotham
Installations
Added Foundry installation
Smelt Metal action: 10 hours, -50 metal, +30 refined metal
Change: upgrading installations now costs -30 refined metal and -10 gas.
Who are the Factions?
You might’ve noticed names like Sodality, Apex Division, and Theia Corp in your fleets. These represent political interest groups within your fleet. This means that they have motivations and agendas beyond your own interests, and you’ll need to work with them in order to find your people a new home.
We’re introducing three to start: [table] [tr] [td] [/td] [td]Theia Corp needs to know. They care more about having the information than doing much with it. Upgrade your scanners and use them a lot, and they’ll help you keep the fleet in line.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td][Apex Division prepares for threats within and without, and they do so by asking for better vehicles for their many training exercises. Get ready for harsh environments with few resources while expanding your fleet’s ability to get them planetside.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][/td] [td]Sodality focuses on the needs of your fleet’s population. They want a higher quality of life, and the assurance that you’re satisfying the base needs of the fleet. Food, water, shelter, and morale will win the hearts and minds. Gameplay[/td] [/tr] [/table]
To represent the powerful influence Factions hold over the fleet, we’re introducing the Council Meeting:
Every fourth jump, the factions will call a Council Meeting and each give you an Agenda - a large, multi-jump goal that fits their motives. Successfully complete it and your relationship with them will go up; fail it, and it goes down. Maintaining a strong relationship with a Faction will give you access to powerful abilities, while allowing a relationship to decline may lead to that Faction sabotaging your efforts as they attempt to take power for themselves.
Requests
We’ve made some changes to the Quests. They are now Faction specific requests that, if successfully completed, will give you favor points to unlock the aforementioned Faction skills.
You’ll no longer receive a long list of tasks from each Faction. Instead, you’ll be able to decide who you’d like to support. After jumping but before entering a new system, each faction will provide you with their request. You’ll only be able to select one, and, if you fail the request, you’ll lower your relationship with that faction. Choose wisely.
Faction Skills
Once you’ve earned some favors by completing requests, you’ll be able to access Faction skills. Access these by opening the Faction board and selecting an ability like you would on a ship. Here are the three you’ll have access to:
Apex Division Field Marshals Cost: 2 Favor Halve Scan and Exploit run times for this system.
Sodality Building a Better Future Cost: 2 Favor Select a ship - upgrade all installations on that ship without paying any costs (24 second run time).
Theia Corp Air Dirty Laundry Cost: 1 Favor Remove a captain from a ship and randomize a new captain (new name, persona power, and Faction).
Resource Changes
Refined Metals
This patch will also include a change to the way metal functions as a resource. We’re introducing refined metal, an uncommon, manufacturable form of metal that you must spend in order to upgrade your installations. Refined metal can be found on Asteroids and can otherwise be converted from normal metal using the Smelt Metal action on the new Foundry installation.
Early Access Patch 0.1.5
Welcome to our first patch for In Search Of A Home. We have a mix of bug fixes, content additions, and quality of life changes included here. Generally, you should expect us to do one or two of these smaller patches for every major feature update patch, at least initially. Please let us know your thoughts or questions on our Discord!
Content Additions
New Installations
Extra Living Quarters: When built and each time its upgraded increases morale slightly. If dismantled lose morale based on its current level. Cost: 60 Metal.
New Captain Powers
Artistic: This ship gains the Grand Monument ability. Once per jump, increase Morale a small amount. Cost: 20 Metal.
Curious: Sensors on this ship scan twice as many caches when used.
Fastidious: Hangars on this ship exploit 10% more Metal and Gas when used.
Content Changes
Captain Power, Agrarian: No longer has any effect on exploiting food caches, instead gives Hydroponics on this ship 50% extra production.
Flagship: Always starts with a Long Range Scanner Installation.
Quality of Life Changes
Power We realized that moving installations in and out of powered slots and managing all that wasn’t really fun, nor particularly on point of the fantasy. Power now works as a gate - you either have enough power to build/upgrade that next installation or you don’t. No more dragging needed. We will be doing more passes on the UI to catch up with this change in subsequent patches. Let us know how this feels!
Draft Phase We realized that new players could come out of draft phase and literally not be able to jump because of not having a long range scanner - and in fact would realize this after spending all their metal on other installations. To smooth this out we put a long range scanner on every flagship.
Additionally, we had the suggestion text for what to pick for new players coming into draft phase on the draft screen itself with icons, so you won’t need to desperately try to remember what that popup said that is now gone.
Narrative Changes
Population We adjusted the population to be in the hundreds, rather than tens of thousands, to help better communicate the scale and theme of the game. This overall scale may still be adjusted in the future, however this feels closer to the stakes we want you to feel especially when you see losses during events.
Population range is now 300-500 coming out of draft phase
Faction Names We swapped out our generic background names for our new Faction Names. See our faction preview for more details on this upcoming system!
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where occasionally the next jump would be called “NotEnoughStarNames”
Fixed ‘Scuttle’ so that the resources from the ability would properly go to the fleet (instead of onto the ship that then immediately blew up)
Fixed an issue where population would randomly jump up by thousands on your first jump.
Fixed an issue where the Starvation warning was more persistent and intrusive than needed
Fixed a problem with Star System generation where the max number of object types was not being respected.
Faction Update Preview
As you journey, In Search Of A Home, we wanted to keep the overall focus of the game on your fleet. The journey is as much about your ability to keep a huddled mass of refugees together and united in purpose as much as it what planets you encounter along the way. Giving that view into the population of your fleet is one of the biggest sets of features we have lined up to deliver during early access.
We wanted to give you guys a bit of a preview of the Faction Update that will be coming in November and is the first of several big feature updates we have planned for early access. This preview introduces the initial factions you'll have to build relationships with and tells you a bit more about them. We'll do another preview before launch jumping into more of the ways you'll interact with them.
Factions inside In Search Of A Home represent groups that have formed within the population that have a fair amount of influence. People are inherently tribal and even in catastrophe -- perhaps especially in catastrophe -- its hard to let go of old habits. Factions are a mix of groups that operated before the sojourn, their members still going through the motions for a sense of security, or groups that have come together as folks have sought familiarity and solace on this lonesome journey.
Theia Corporation was a cross between a savvy media conglomerate and a covert intelligence agency. They traded in information, for information is power, and prior to the Fleet’s exodus from the homeworld, Theia Corp made significant investments to pursue both. Consequently, there are two sides to Theia Corp: One being the remnants of their public face as an unrivaled media empire, and the other being their other more secret face as the foremost trafficker of classified information. Their small, but highly effective, network of operatives comb every source of information that they can find, to always have the inside track on anything that happens within the Fleet. Ideologically, there is a significant bent towards fostering the progressive ideal of freedom of information, especially given the dire situation that the Fleet’s survivors find themselves in, but in support of their desire to know everything that is happening that could impact the Fleet, they are willing to do whatever it takes at times, to ensure that freedom...and in particular, that THEY are the only ones with the ability to provide it.
Apex Division is the aggregation of what remained of the Homeworld’s armed forces, law enforcement and private military corporations. Initially independent entities that each played a role in the exodus from Homeworld, as the Fleet left for their long journey and it became clear that the number of ships and people were a critical point of survival, Apex Division consolidated its power among all those disparate groups and became the sole and premier independent peacekeeping force for the Fleet. Well funded and extremely well armed, the Apex Division maintains a reasonable force of ground and space forces, as well as an unspecified number of military grade weapons aboard their main warship. The Apex Division has, since the departure away from their home planet, begun to secure a more solid position for themselves beyond merely being a military organization. In addition to fielding all of the Fleet’s law enforcement and security personnel, they have begun making alliances in the political and economic spheres as well, taking tactical roles throughout the Fleet as a way of securing both their position and their funding. The Apex Division has not yet allied themselves with any one faction, but due to their might as a fighting force, other factions are willing to ingratiate themselves to the Division to ensure their own security.
Sodality represents the bulk of the “common people” throughout the Fleet, acting as a communal ruling body for the miners, agri workers, wasters and other labor-based occupations. As wonderful as the technology of the Fleet is, it still requires human muscle to operate and propel it forward in key areas, and Sodality is the shield that protects those people who keep the Fleet flying, and its people fed and comfortable. Given the state of the Fleet’s survivors this group is more important, and powerful, than ever. Not unlike a large-scale labor union, Sodality began life advocating for worker’s rights as people faced oppressive work practices, dangerous environments and exploitation in the harsh, cold vacuum of space. Sodality is overseen by a committee that is selected from among its own members to rule it and negotiate on all their behalfs. Anyone that belongs to Sodality can run for a seat on the committee, and if chosen, will attend briefings and meetings with the other members of Fleet command. Because of the progressive and collective nature of their organizing structure however, coupled with the number of individuals they represent, many decisions are subject to long highly protracted debates, and so are typically drawn out far longer than most other factions.
Arguably one of the more prominent factions of the Fleet’s survivors, the Espial Society represents the foremost minds in the Fleet, the leaders in technological and scientific progress. They are the ones who discovered the Jump Drive, and they are primarily interested in how this technology can be utilized for the successful completion of their mission as well as any incidental progression that can be obtained from its application. Given the importance of the Jump Drive to the continued survival and primary mission of the Fleet, keeping the Espial Society (no matter how small they may be) happy and funded is one of the chief struggles for you. The Espial Society is well aware of their importance to the Fleet and they aren’t afraid to take full advantage of that fact, pressing for greater influence, resources, funding and power, despite the needs of other factions or the Fleet’s survivors. If they have a weakness, it’s that they are more interested in continuing their own research than they are any other concern, which can make them seem myopic and stubborn. They also tend to look down on all other factions, particularly those who subscribe to religious and spiritual beliefs, which they have no use for and view as backwards thinking.
The Synod is a highly organized and dogmatic religious group, that demands loyalty and strict adherence to their tenets of faith. That faith is grounded in a naturalistic worship of the Cosmos, which they have come to believe is Perfect. In their worldview, everything happens for a reason, according to the Divine Plan as laid down in the quantum state of every atom in existence. They do not believe in free will, and see the journey they are on as an Exodus, not unlike those in other religious texts. They favor taking a long view of things, since Free Will is an illusion they are convinced that they can take no action and things will play out exactly as the Universe has decreed it should. This general philosophy can make them intractable and extremely challenging to negotiate with. Even in a reduced population such as the survivors of the Fleet, this deep-seated devotion to the ideas in their doctrine make them an extremely powerful bloc, attracting a fair number of the more spiritually and religiously minded survivors of the Fleet’s population, whose collective voices would be a force for the Fleet Commander to contend with, or risk being ousted by their numbers.
So for now, those are the groups you'll be having to contend with. These faction will be replacing the current "House, Legion, Swarm.." factions inside the build and start to have a lot more personality around their interactions with you. In addition, we'll be introducing new systems around your interactions with their agendas, requests, and perhaps even cashing in a few favors with each Faction. We'll dive into these systems in the next preview!
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