Star Wars: Interregnum is an upcoming mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion that builds off of the highly successful Enhanced 4X Mod. Fleeing the unknown terror that is chasing the Vasari, the factions of Sins of a Solar Empire stumble on a temporary wormhole that takes them to a galaxy far, far away. The sudden arrival of armadas with trillions of refugees and thousands of warships between the events of Episodes 5 & 6 forever alters the Star Wars universe and plunges the galaxy into an unprecedented period of chaos and violence. Begun, a new conflict has.
The upcoming update that will be released Soon(TM) will feature a bit of a rework to Grand Moff Ardus Kaine.
Kaine is an economic and defensive oriented Warlord, but his titan the Reaper did not have the same impact on games as the other factions. To mitigate this, the Deploy Defenders ability has been removed from Kaine. In its place, his previous ultimate ability, New Order Enforcer, has been adjusted and placed as a regular ability. This gives Kaine a heal at level 1 that can immediately synergize with Logistics, and is a powerful fleet buff to his forces even at level 1. This can help him remain competitive in mid game fights to gain Titan experience.
But best of all, Kaine now has a new Ultimate Ability, Pentastar Talks. Based on Kaine's founding of the Pentastar Alignment aboard the Reaper, Pentastar Talks is similar to the TEC Armistice in that it prevents both allied and enemy ships from fighting or taking damage. However, it applies to the entire gravity well, so long as Kaine remains in it.
Pentastar Talks has a very unique secondary effect if used at a planet with a minor faction however. It will immediately force the minor faction to join Kaine's Empire. This applies even to minor factions already controlled by another player, and even if that other player has a starbase protecting the embassy.
This means Kaine at level 6 can grab all the minor factions on the map much more easily than anyone else late game. Even better, he does not leave an embassy behind that can be attacked. The only way to reclaim a minor faction taken by Pentastar Talks is to kill Kaine himself. And killing a Super Star Destroyer is a lot more difficult task than unarmed diplomats.
You can play this new version of Grand Moff Kaine in the Interregnum Beta 2.5 update.
Honestly, Pentastar Talks just flipped his value from bottom to top for me. That is such a cool concept!
I wasn't sure how much we could mod the minor faction capture mechanics, but I'm very pleased with how this one turned out.
Honestly, most of my games I either completely ignore the Titans in favor of more capital ships, only using a titan as my very last ship. That may change now - much more value
As Warlords I'm not sure I agree with that approach. All of the unique Warlord Titans have some really unique, powerful, and thematic abilities.
*Kaine has the ability to boost your entire Empire's economy while he's not in combat, and now hostile takeover minor factions.
*Isard has Krytos Virus, which can be powerful enough to be an alternate win condition. She also has the best intel with vision on all planets and hyperspace lanes late game.
*Thrawn doesn't command an SSD, but the Nighthammer he can build can cloak and completely bypass enemy shields.
*Zsinj can completely ignore Inderdictors and other hyperspace disruption, making his forces great at raiding.
Oh, I get the Warlord SSD's are powerful, I just meant as an average across all factions and all other mods.
Pentastar Talks Sounds usefull in theory if you are losing the fight otherwise it just seems to be the same annoying ability that Armistice if used against a Player, the secondary effects seems great but could probably be a separated ability rather that an add up while increasing the minor faction planet defenses/stats since most of the time they lose to even small fleets and sometimes AI just used them to farm capital Exp.
Also for late game Minor factions are A) already dead since AI prefer to clean up the well or bomb the planet rather that take the embassy or B) the Minor faction abilities are so bad/average that better take them and take a chance to find a relic there (which happen in a considerable high rate) and build the planet in any usefull way instead of just take what the AI does